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HISTORICAL SKETCHES 



OF 



FRANKLIN COUNTY 



AND 



ITS SEVERAL TOWNS 



WITH MANY 



SHORT BIOGRAPHIES 



BY 

FREDERICK J. SEAVER 

MALONE. NEW YORK 



ALBANY 

J. B. LYON COMPANY. PRINTERS 

1918 



F/: 
•F8 



COPYRIGHT 1918 BY 

FREDERICK J. SEAVER 

MALONE. N. Y. 



WO'v' 29 1918 

©CI.A508326 



S* | 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Page 



Foreword 



X] 



CHAPTEE I 
Franklin County 

Not on a Natural Highway, and Therefore Late in Settlement — Not Inhabited 
Early Even by Indians — " The Siberia of New York " — The First Vvhite 
Settlers Indian Captives — The Founding of St. Regis — The Story of Sir 
John Johnston's Flight Through the Adirondaeks - The Old Military Tract 
and the Macomb Purchase — Sketches of Some of the Early Land Owners 
a Group of Remarkable Men — Character of the Pioneers — The Erection of 
the County — Population at Various Periods — Apprehension of Indian 
Massacres — Geographical and Climatic — Pioneer Conditions — Money 
Scarcity — Potash Making a Principal Industry — How the Pioneers Lived 

— Schools — An Early Agricultural Society — Changed Dairying Conditions 

— The Hop Industry — Crops to Which the County is Especially Adapted- 
Horses and Other Stock — Striving for Transportation Facilities — Banking 

— Gradual Progress — The Present Agricultural Society — Civil VVar 
Conditions and Activities Contrasted with Those Now Prevalent — The 
County's Civil War Military Record — Life after the War — Private Parks 
and Forest Fires — The Adirondaeks as a Sanatorium and Park — Property 
Valuations and Taxation —The Public Schools — Other Changes in Brief - 
The Future. 

CHAPTEE II 

Franklin County Official Acts 

The County Erected in March, 1808, and Site for Court House Fixed in 1809- 
Cost of the Structure, which was also Jail and a House of Worship — Pro- 
ceedings of the Supervisors 1808-1813 — The Jail Condemned — Salaries 
Increased — Excise — Civil War Burdens — A New Poor House — Super- 
visors' Sessions More Protracted — A Company of the State National Guard 
Formed and an Armory Bought — A New Court House, Clerk s Office and 
Jail — Officials Refund 'Unlawful Fees — The Influx of Chinamen — Cost of 
Supporting the Poor — Town Meetings in the Fall — Improvement of High- 
ways _ Breaches of Trust — Increase in County Expenses. 

CHAPTEE III 
Franklin County Politically 

Original Grouping of Parties - Early Party Names; Federal anti-Federal. 
Republican, National Republican, Clintonian-Repubhcan, anti-Masonic, Whig 
and Democratic — The anti-Masonic Movement Fiercely Bitter — The Aboli- 
tion Party — Little Interest in Politics in Franklin County until after 1822 
— Elections Formerly Continued for Days — Franklin County Generally fed- 
eralist or Whig until 1843, and Then Until 1859 Usually Democratic — A 

[iii] 



1V Table of Contents 

Campaign Story — The Campaign of 1840 the First with Spectacular Fea- 
tures—The Democracy Disrupted — The Knownothing Party — Political 
Rancor — The Campaign of 1860 — A Union Party During the Civil War — 
features of Some Campaigns — A New Ballot Law — " Dandelions " and 
Snowshoers '-Malone's Glee Club - Caucus Systems and Practices - 
Lists of Public Officials. 

CHAPTER IV 

Altamont 

T ° W w Er fr Ct f, d \ 890 — Reservoir Dam Built in 1870, and Broke in 1871— The 
t? S- °l v? 7 4 L~ Earliest S ettlers-Mart. Moody, Guide and Fabricator 
— The First Wedding on " Sally's Rock " — The Northern Adirondack R. R. 
fj^t T PP<?r ^ke -Early Saw Mills - A Big New Industry Locates Just 
as the Town Seemed to be "Going Back "-An Experiment in Scientific 
Forestry-Derrick — Moody — Litchfield Park and Chateau; the Latter a 
KreT R C qq St lV TU F,! r ^ke Village -An Error in the Census - The Big 
oih^oSief-MutdeJs "^ Im P r —^ ~ Church Organizations an J 

CHAPTER V 
Bangor 

Town Erected 1812 -Early Settlers of a Superior Type, with Many Descendants 
Still Living in Bangor -Early Industries Included a Linseed Oil Mill 
and an Axe Factory -A Beneficent Bequest - Manufacture of Starch and 
Tanning Extract -Fruit Raising -A Remarkable Dream - The T6wS 
SnoJ 'oduct-The^ewett Milk Pan - Town Houses the First ChuXs 
— Societies and Church Organizations. 

CHAPTER VI 
Bellmont 

Town Erected 1833 - Its Development Slow, and Its Timber Practically Wasted 
-Its Summer Resorts -Early Settlers and Early Industries - Iron Mines 
-Cnur r che 8 ~ ^^ ^ Alm ° St * De8erted Hamlet - Two MurSrs 

CHAPTER VII 
Bombay 

Town Erected 1833 -The Hogans - The First Settlers Largely Irish- Others 
Came from Vermont and New Hampshire - First Religious Movements - 
A Convent and Indian Mission School - Eminent Sons of Bombay -Some 
of the Town's Industries — Railroads — Dairying. * 

CHAPTER VIII 
Brandon 

'J'own Erected 1828 -Early Settlers Frugal and Sturdy - Few Farms and 
Lumbering Operations Small Until Recent Years — Revnoldltnn n?< 'n 
Hamlet -Voting Under Difficulties - A Murder -Churches 7 



Table of Contents v 

CHAPTER IX 

Brighton 

Town Erected 1S5S- Early Settlement - The Town Made by Adirondack Sum- 
mer Resorts - Gabriels - Pigeon Flocks and Roosts - Churches. 

CHAPTER X 
Burke 

ttv t„H 1S44 — 4 Town of "Hollows" — Settlement Began Earlier Than 
Town Erected 1M4 — A iowu T , pi are but now Eminently 

2SsSs^sai gas?- BSftJsa-x- ™ ^ 

— Societies and Churches. 

CHAPTER XI 
Chateaugay 

Erected as a Clinton County Tow, ,170. - Gha^ay J^ghe^Tojy of 

all of Franklin P^^-^MUtoT tStmSb-A Good Town Agri- 
Intermittent Spring -The Old ^ a g/g3 shiT>a _ other Pioneers - 
culturally -The First Settler and His _ E ships > A 

Irish Came in 1850, at First a Rough and Turin rtmt* i«n ^ & 
the Best Citizens -Many Pioneer ^g^Jg^Point in the War of 1812 

^tTb^^^^ 

a Circuit Rider -Newspapers, Creameries, etc. 
CHAPTER XII 

Constable 

Tow „ Erected 1807 -More Porous in ™££j*£Z?SSK2£ . gSE 

a Lively Hamlet — Smuggling and f "^ "l^ 1 % ettl ers Early Taverns and 

Movements — Churches. 

CHAPTER XIII 
Dickinson 

Town Erected 1808 -Named in CompUment ^^^^^^^^ 

New Jersey -Northern Part of Town ^Fiiri ^ Hunter -How One 

ally Strong Men -How a Debt V »as Paid A g y A Man of 

Pioneer Went to S c J 10 ° l -/ ket tTt,hcraft - A Noted Horse Thief - An 
Eccentricities Who Believed « Wrtch«aft_ ^ ftnd Landlord9 _ 

SS^^^SSSt^J sSties - Mormon Proselyting. 



V1 Table of Contents 

CHAPTEE XIV 

DlJANE 

Town Erected 1828 - The Duane Family - Major Duane Located in Order to 
Help Stamp Out Wolf Bounty Frauds, and Operated in Duane AWBig 

ReZrU-ZonZT^U™ S « h -? der ^ivfties - Hotels and s/mm ef 
jvesorts Alonzo K. * uller — Religious Movements. 

CHAPTER XV 

Fort Covington 

Town Erected 1817 -Military Reservations Leased by the State to Individuals 

Reservation Th.T' "J™*^ ^T " Frendl Mills - p art of an Indian 
th Siw Town's Farmers Progressive and Successful - Some of 

h n e / S Sett lfrs- Fort Covington and the War of 1812 -Fort CovinLn 
TtL~\ZuZT r t7? US r 6S Enter P ri - S - Sales of Lands by g the 
cSSw lndust / ies — Hotels — Newspapers —The Academv —Transportation 
Conditions -An Agricultural Society - Murders - Fort Covington Office 
KX-SJI" f ° r Mvtajj on Sunday -Former ProminlnfResid^K 
Conditions. G ™ »- Churches and Societies - Some Unfavorable 

CHAPTER XVI 
Franklin 

Town Erected ,836- A Sizable Town -A Ref,, s e for Escaped Slave, -A Bribe 

?£^F%^??~? s?s«s art 

Churches. School - Railroads - Many Small Settlements - 

CHAPTER XVII 
Harrietstown 

Settlers- Furrt Hotel, - Industries - Saranac Lake VillaS and Lake"cie,r 
Lmprovements - Newspapers - The Philosophers' Club - Caches - 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Ma LONE 

Town Erected 1805 -Derivation of Its Name - Some of the Pioneers - Curiosi 
ties of Old Assessment Rolls - The Old Pound - Taxes Paid bv Notes - Pen 
?le r F f T h !, E f rly Villa ^ e - Prices from an Old Merchant ? Book ^- 
Some Early Industries -Community Achievements - Frank™ " Academv - 
Other Educational Institutions — War Influences — 181 % ™ T™JtS« ?™J 
— Olln-PnrlHriQ t^„„i t j j. • „. loio an Important Year 

federate Raid, Apprehended - Malone's Part in the Present War 



Table of Contents vii 

CHAPTER XIX 

MOIRA 

Town Erected 1S2S — Earliest Settlers — Long a "Lawrence Town" — The Ham- 
lets of Moira and Brushton — Railroads — Moira the Mecca of Democratic 
Pilgrims — An Old Postmaster's Accounts — Quality of the Town's Citizenry 
High — A Thompsonian Doctor — Industrial Enterprises — The County's 
First Sanatorium — A Chalybeate Spring — An Agricultural Society — 
Murders — Newspapers — Early Hotels — Churches and Church Discipline 

— Fraternal Organizations. 

CHAPTER XX 

Santa Clara 

Town Erected 1888 — Origin of Name — First Settlers — Traces of Military 
Occupancy — The First Mill and Tavern — An Iron Mine — Humphrey's 
Landing Now Santa Clara — Upper Saranac — Brandon — Fires at Santa 
Clara — Patrick A. Ducey and John Hurd — Everton — New Lumbering 
Methods — Hamlets Almost Deserted — The Rockefeller Private Park — 
Churches — Vacation Home for Working Girls — Facts and Conjectures 
about Military Occupancy — Fatal Fires — Murders. 

CHAPTER. XXI 
Waverly 

Town Erected 1880 — Character of Soil and Adaptability to Agriculture — Other 
Natural Resources and Reforestation — Beginning and Growth of St. Regis 
Falls — A Murder — Some of the Leading Men of the Town — Churches and 
Societies — Population. 

CHAPTER XXII 
Westville 

Town Erected 1829' — Population — Adapted to Market Gardening — First 
Settlers and Their Activities — Giant Pine for Ships' Masts — An Iron 
Forge — Grist and Saw Mills — Lime and Brick Making — Early Merchants 

— Hotels — A Destructive Forest Fire — Societies and Churches. 

CHAPTER XXIII 
The Saint Regis Reservation and the Saint Regis Indians 

The Reservation; How It Was Established — Basis of Indian Claims — Prowess 
and Ruthlessness of the Mohawks — The State's Contention as to Owner- 
ship — The Price the Indians Received — Parts of Reservation Ceded Later 
to the State — Annuities — The Canadian Saint Regis Reservation — Timber 
Wasted and Now Scarce — The Indians — -Adoption of the Name Saint 
Regis — The Saint Regis Church and the Story of Us Bell — Gifts from 
France and Rome to the Church and How They Were Lost — The Indians 
in the Revolutionary War and in the War of 1812 — Indians Who Were 
Outstanding Figures — The Number of American Saint Regis Indians — 
Indian Clans and Present Form of Government — Improved Condition of the 
Indians, with a Better Inclination to Work — The Squaws Better Treated — 
Benefited by "Kansas Money" — What of the Indians' Future? 



viii Table of Contents 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Franklin County and the War of 1812 

Early Local Military Activities — Operations at Fort Covington and Saint Regis 

— General Hampton and General Wilkinson's Operations — The Former De- 
feated North of Chateaugay, and the Latter at Chrystler's Farm — General 
Hampton Ran Away — The Campaign Against Montreal Abandoned and the 
Wilkinson Army Quartered at Fort Covington — An Epidemic of Sickness — 
Insufficient Medicines, Food and Clothing — Malone a Hospital Point — 
Horrible Destitution and Suffering — General Wilkinson's Abortive Plans — 
French Mills, Chateaugay and Malone Abandoned by the American Army, 
Followed by a British Invasion — Malone Panic Stricken — Extracts from 
the Tompkins Papers — Minor Notes — Pay -Rolls of Franklin County Militia 
Companies. 

CHAPTER XXV 
Scandals of an Early Period 

The Embargo Act of 1807 More Injurious to the United States Than to England 
or France — The Act Violated — New England and Northern New York 
Sentiment Antagonistic to the War of 1812 — Potash Flagrantly Smuggled 
into Canada — Vast Fraudulent War Claims — " Old Times " Not Better 
Than the New — Wolf Bounties and the Frauds Perpetrated by the Hunters 

— The State and County Robbed — Exposure of the Frauds, and New 
Bounty Laws. 

CHAPTER XXVI 

Arsenal Green, Malone 

Boundaries of the Property — Given by Cone Andrus to the State and a Part 
Lost Under Mortgage Foreclosure, but Recovered • — Formerly No Lanes or 
Driveways, and Those Now Existing Belong within the Park — The Old 
Arsenal Lot — An Arsenal Built in 1812 — The Arsenal Lot Sold in 1853 — 
A Political Celebration — Early Militia Conditions — Stories of Old " Train- 
ing Days " — Some of the Militia Officers — " The Chateaugay Infant " — 
The Green Quitclaimed by the State to the Village of Malone in 1917. 

CHAPTER XXVII 

The Underground Railroad 

Date of Establishment Uncertain — It Flourished Between 1840 and 1860 — 
Purpose of the Movement, and Methods of Operation — " Stockholders ". 
" Conductors " and " Station Agents " — Where the Lines Ran ; One Through 
Malone — Some of the Fugitives — Some of the Franklin County Abolition- 
ists and " Station Agents " and " Stockholders." 

CHAPTER XXVIII 
Transportation Development 

How the First Settler Came to Chateaugay — Early Journeys Required More 
Days Than They Now Take Hours — Wretched Mail Service — Character of 
Early Highways — The St. Lawrence Turnpike — The Northwest Bay Road 

— The Old Military Road from Plattsburgh to Chateaugay — The Hopkinton 
and Port Kent Turnpike — Effort to Have a Canal Constructed — Former 
Navigation Facilities — Agitation for a Railroad, with Success after Twenty 
Years — Other Movements to Secure Railroad Facilities — Railroads Finally 
Built — The County Spends Half a Million Dollars for Improved Highways 

— Large Numbers of Automobiles — Horses Disappearing. 



Table of Contents ix 

CHAPTER XXIX 

The Fenian Raids 

Malone a Rendezvous in 1866 and 1870 — Derivation of the Word "Fenian" — 
Organization of the Fenian Society — Original Purpose of the Organization 
— Spread of its Branches or Circles — A New Scheme of Operation Formed 
and Announced — Preparations in Canada to Repel an Apprehended Inva- 
sion — Arrival of Large Numbers of Fenians at Malone — Canadians Be- 
lieved to Be Spies, and Roughly Handled — Advance upon Canada Aban- 
doned, United States Authorities Having Interfered — Another Movement in 
1870 — An Engagement Near Trout River, Resulting in a Fenian Rout — 
The United States Again Interfered — Fenians Arrested and Imprisoned — 
Informers and Spies. 

CHAPTER XXX 

Eleazer Williams 

The Title, " Dauphin " — Story of the Son of Louis XVI., Known as the " Lost 
Dauphin " — Over Forty Claimants, of Whom Eleazer Williams Was One — 
Known Facts about Williams — The Hanson Claim of Williams's Royal 
Descent — Williams's Own Story of His Life — Assertion of an Amazing 
Offer — Rev. Mr. Robertson's View — Other Glimpses of Mr. Williams's Life 
and Personal Appearance — The Mother Declared Him to Be Not an Adopted 
Son, but Her Own Child. 

CHAPTER XXXI 
Luther Bradish 

An Associate of Thurlow Weed, Millard Fillmore and William H. Seward — 
Identification with Franklin County — Elected to the Assembly — Speaker 
of That Body — Then Twice Lieutenant-Governor — Defeated for Governor 
— An Extensive Traveler — Closing Years of His Life. 

CHAPTER XXXII 
William Almon Wheeler 

CHAPTER XXXIII 

Many Biographical Sketches 



FOREWORD 

The suggestion has been urgently made to me now and again by various 
parties that the information acquired concerning Malone and Franklin 
county affairs during newspaper work here covering a period of forty 
years, together with the data at my command contained in the files of 
the Malone Palladium, make it a sort of public duty that I prepare and 
publish a history of Franklin county. But such a work is too formid- 
able to be undertaken with the time that could be spared for continuous 
application in examination and compilation of records, even if capacity 
and aptitude for so ambitious an effort were not also lacking. 

Yet I am by no means insensible to the desirability and importance 
of assembling and arranging in narrative form such personal recollec- 
tions of our older residents as may still be obtainable, as well as more 
authoritative information which, if not put together soon, may be lost 
forever, or at least become daily more and more difficult to collect and 
shape for the benefit of those who in later days may care to know the 
past of our several towns and of the county. The work ought, indeed, to 
have been done fifty years or more ago if it were to possess the charm and 
value that men of the time of Asa Hascall, Joseph H. Jackson, Sidney 
Lawrence, William A. Wheeler, Ashbel B. Parmelee, Dr. Theodore Gay, 
Dr. Sidney P. Bates, Joel J. Seaver, Francis T. Heath or others who 
might be named could have given to it. But the obligation to prepare and 
leave accessible such a record and recital was perhaps not then realized, 
as certainly it was not discharged. In the spirit and with the purpose 
of now supplying, at least in part, what it is regrettable that others did 
not do long ago, a series of sketches will be prepared by me along the 
lines indicated, though, of course, without claim or pretense that they 
should be dignified as "history." Bather, they will be in the main 
biographical and desultory, with reproduction of parts of some of the 
papers in my possession which were written by men of prominence of 
an earlier generation. If the effort shall serve to interest or entertain 
any considerable number of Franklin county people in the present, and 
be found of value in later years for reference, I shall be sufficiently 
recompensed for the time and labor that I shall have expended. 

There are doubtless many omissions, and the sole merit which it is 
ventured to claim for the work is that it has been wrought with pains- 
taking care in prosecuting inquiries and in searching records, and that, 

[xi] 



xii Foreword 

so far as it has been possible to make it, it is accurate. The files of the 
Franklin Telegraph from 1820 to 1829, of the Spectator for 1833 and 
1834, and of the Malone Palladium from 1835 to 1909 have been exam- 
ined week by week, and records in the surrogate's, county clerk's and 
the several town clerks' offices, as well as many church records and some 
in the office of the Secretary of State, have been consulted diligently for 
facts; and it has been my purpose that no unqualified statement of 
importance should be made that has not been authenticated. 

FREDERICK J. SEAVER. 
Malone, N.. Y., July 1, 1918. 



CHAPTER I 

FRANKLIN COUNTY 

The discovery of America having been due to the dream of a west- 
ward passage to the Indies, the localities not on the seaboard which 
were first settled were logically the important river valleys, for the early 
voyagers were prone to mistake any large stream for an arm of the 
sea, and to ascend it in expectation that it must lead to a western 
ocean. The valleys of the Hudson and St. Lawrence were thus the 
regions in and about the State of New York to be earliest opened and 
occupied. Accordingly we find the sites of Quebec, Montreal and New 
York each becoming a military and trading post almost within a century 
of the discovery by Columbus, and in less than another hundred years 
there were forts at Oswego and Niagara, and for France and the Church 
Jesuit missionaries were assiduously cultivating the friendship of the 
Indians through Central New York, in the remote parts of Canada, 
and even in the territory which we now call our Middle West. That 
other localities to which natural thoroughfares or important Indian 
trails did not lead waited yet another century before being occupied 
is easily understandable. It is, indeed, occasion rather for surprise 
that a country of the characteristics which were popularly imputed to 
Northern New York, except possibly to the shores of Lake Champlain 
and the St. Lawrence, should have attracted settlement even then. 
Surveys of State lands to the line of the present boundary of St. 
Lawrence county had sent the report broadcast that the entire region 
was rugged, mountainous and inhospitable, if not uninhabitable.. A 
map in the Documentary History of New York, published in that 
period, actually carried the note that the mountains here " show their 
tops always covered with snow," and many years later Senator Young 
stigmatized Franklin county as " the Siberia of New York." So 
unfavorably, in fact, was this section regarded that notwithstanding the 
State set apart in it hundreds of thousands of acres, still called " the 
Old Military Tract," from which revolutionary soldiers might choose 
homesteads under the war land-bounty acts, not a single acre here 
was ever entered by any claimant — which is to say that only a little 
more than a century ago lands in our county could not even be given 
away. No natural highway pierced it, or even touched it except at 
a single point, nor is there evidence that the Indians inhabited any 
part of it until within comparatively modern times. True, the 



2 History of Franklin County 

Adirondack Mountains* take their name from a tribe of the Algonquins, 
whom the French called " Montagnais," and the woods and waters which 
in after years afforded so rare sport to white lovers of the rod and gun, 
and later still became a resort of pleasure and fashion for troops of 
summer idlers, and a sanatorium of blessed potency for the sick, were 
aforetime the deer-hunting and beaver-trapping grounds of the Algon- 
quins and the Iroquois. But that seems to have been all, for the 
permanent lodges of these peoples were elsewhere, save for the possible 
exception of some very remote occupation by them or their predecessors 
of the vicinity of St. Eegis. Here, on the east bank of the river of 
the same name, near its confluence with the St. Lawrence, may still be 
distinguished what some antiquarians believe to be an ancient Indian 
burial mound — probably made (if made at all except by nature) by 
Indians antedating the discovery by Columbus. As a matter of fact 
there are few burial mounds east of Ohio. 

The first white person known to have set foot -within the present 
limits of Franklin county came to St. Regis from Caughnawaga about 
1750. The Indians at the latter place were a remnant of the Mohawks, 
formerly settled near Schenectady, and known as the " praying Indians." 
They were persuaded by French missionaries to remove to Canada about 
1667. • The story, briefly, as told by Franklin B. Hough, who was pains- 

*An old gazetteer refers to one range of the Adirondacks as the " Peru Moun- 
tains," which naturally suggests treasure and precious metals, but in fact the 
name is understood to have been taken from the town, which, in turn, is sup- 
posed to have been so called because of its mountainous character. This par- 
ticular range is described as extending from about ten miles west of Lake Cham- 
plain southwestwardly through Essex and Hamilton counties for a distance of 
one hundred and thirty miles. 

Note. — Though the matter does not pertain particularly, or hardly at all, to 
Franklin county, it may nevertheless not be uninteresting to emphasize here the 
error of what has been, I think, the general school-boy impression, that America 
was once densely populated by aborigines. My own school history's recital of 
wars and massacres certainly suggested to the childish mind that the Indians, 
if not as numerous as the leaves of the forest, were surely almost as many 
as the trees. But the best authorities place their probable aggregate, of 
both sexes and all ages, east of the Rockies, in the territory of the United 
States, at the time of the discovery, at not more than 300,000, or only about as 
many souls as the cities of Rochester and Utica combined now contain. The 
same territory had in 1910 a population of 85,000,000, or more than 260 times 
that of the Indians four centuries previous. The Indians now surviving in the 
United States, when the idea is more or less prevalent that they have been all 
but exterminated, number almost as many as they did in 1500. Lossing and 
other more accurate historians estimate the number of Indians belonging to the 
"Long House" or the League of the Iroquois, at not to exceed 13,000 at their 
strongest, and there are half as many now living in New York. Yet, unless 
we may be near a reservation we rarely see one, or, unless something directs the 
matter particularly to attention, realize that there are any in the State. Fisk 
gives the Hurons, who occupied the country to the east of the lake that bears 
their name, only 20,000 souls in all, and a somewhat careful examination of 
authorities discloses that with the exception of King Philip's forces in the ter- 
rible war that lie waged, and which at their maximum numbered between 3,000 



Franklin County 3 

taking and usually accurate, is that two boys named Tarbell were 
kidnapped at Groton, Mass., about 1723, taken to Caughnawaga, and 
there adopted — growing up in the habits, manners and language of 
their captors, and in the course of time marrying daughters of two of 
the chiefs. Superior in mind and enterprise to the genuine Indian 
youths, and so outclassing them at many points, jealousy was provoked 
against the Tarbells and their immediate families, aligning the village 
into factions and creating general friction and disturbance. These 
differences proving irreconcilable, the missionary priest at Caughnawaga 
advised the Tarbells to withdraw and establish themselves elsewhere. 
They and their families, together with their wives' parents, proceeded 
to St. Regis, which they called Ak-sis-sas-ne, said to signify " where 
the partridge drums," though the name is claimed by some writers not 
to have been applied because of such drumming, but from the fact 
that the grinding of ice in the St. Lawrence in that vicinity, floating 
through the rapids and lodging in the calmer waters, produces a noise 
which at a distance resembles the drumming of the partridge. Here 
the Tarbells made small clearings for corn fields, and founded their 
homes. Fronting on the St. Lawrence, and bordered by the Raquette 
on the west and by the St. Regis on the east, the location is one of 
great natural attractiveness, and the soil is generally rich and fertile. 
In 1760 they were joined by a colony from Caughnawaga which is 
believed to have numbered several hundred, marshaled and led by 
Father Anthony Gordon, a Jesuit missionary, who, arriving on the day 
whose patron saint is St. Regis, gave that name to the place. The 
motive for this movement from Caughnawaga is understood to have 
been the withdrawal of the Indians from the close vicinity of Montreal, 

and 4,000 warriors, the largest Indian war party prior to or during the Revolu- 
tionary War of which record has been made was one of 1,800, h'd by Montcalm 
at Ticonderoga in 1758; and this included savages recruited all the way from 
Quebec to Iowa. The next largest, of 1,000, was mustered by Sir William 
Johnston in an expedition against Oswego. In other campaigns and marauding 
forays the maximum appears to have been 600 until about 1800, when a much 
larger force was all but exterminated in Ohio, and again at the Custer massacre 
of the Little Big Horn. Most of the colonial Indian horrors were perpetrated 
by bands usually numbering only 30 or 40, though occasionally they were par- 
ticipated in by from 100 to 200. The entire fighting strength of the Iroquois 
in 1700 is rated by Parkman at only 1,200, disease and war having cut it in 
half. The same authority gives the total number of Algonquin warriors in 
Canada at the same date as scarcely 1,000, and this inclusive of all who were 
scattered from Ottawa to the Atlantic. As still further demonstration of the 
point that is sought here to be made, Parkman. in referring to the flight of a 
party of raiders from Massachusetts to Canada, declares thai in the entire 
distance of 200 miles there was not a house or even one Indian wigwam. Thus 
any idea that in pioneer times the country was thickly populated by savages 
must be revised and rejected. Indeed, the slightest careful reflect inn proves that 
in the nature of then existing conditions any considerable population was impos- 
sible, for the country was so much a wilderness, and the Indian clearings and 
fields so few and scant, that it could not have supported large numbers of 
people. 



4 History of Franklin County 

where corrupting and degrading influences, particularly the ease with 
which liquor could be obtained, made the work of the missionaries 
doubly arduous and discouragingly barren of results. Absolute prohibi- 
tion and suppression of the rum evil characterized the new village for a 
time, but has not been a distinguishing condition of the locality in late 
years. Unless the tribe is to degenerate utterly, measures must be 
enforced to restore the state of affairs in this regard which Father Gordon 
instituted. Intemperance and tuberculosis are the scourges of this 
people. 

Another white person besides the Tarbells, an Indian captive and a 
woman, is naturally recalled in connection with St. Eegis, though never 
herself a resident there. In 170-1 the village of Deerfield, Mass., was 
sacked and partly burned, many of the inhabitants massacred, and many 
others carried into captivity. Among the latter was Eunice, aged seven 
years, the daughter of Rev. John Williams. She was taken to Caugh- 
nawaga, grew up in the tribe, and in time mated with an Indian, the 
husband taking the wife's name. She visited Deerfield upon two occa- 
sions after reaching womanhood, but could not be persuaded to desert 
the people with whom her life had been cast, nor to discard even tem- 
porarily her Indian dress and resume the garb of the whites. Eleazer 
Williams (sometimes called "Lazarre"), who is believed by many to 
have been the lost dauphin of France, and who was educated at Long 
Meadow, Mass., and at other schools in New England, and served for 
many years as a missionary to the Indians in Central New York and in 
Wisconsin, afterward becoming an Episcopal clergyman at Hogans- 
burgh, is held by Parkman, and probably with truth, to have been 
Eunice Williams's grandson. But the story of Eleazer Williams will be 
a chapter by itself. 

Though the Tarbells and Father Gordon are the first whites indubi- 
tably known to have set foot within the limits of our county, the 
impression persisted among the early settlers here that others must have 
antedated them; and, indeed, that assumption may be well founded not- 
withstanding it is not susceptible of positive proof. Almost a hundred 
and fifty years before St. Eegis was founded it is known with certainty 
that French fur traders were pushing west and north from Montreal, and 
establishing trading stations at all advantageous points. Thus it is far 
from improbable that territory in the vicinity of Fort Covington and 
St. Eegis may have been occupied by adventurers of this class long before 
the migration of the Tarbells, and that they even penetrated to locations 
a number of miles south of the St. Lawrence. Various incidents arose 



Franklin County 5 

from time to time three-quarters of a century ago which gave support to 
that idea. In 1851 Wing Merritt, a wheelwright of Malone, while dress- 
ing out wagon spokes from an oak tree eighteen inches in diameter that 
had been cut in Brasher, found a leaden bullet within an inch of the 
heart of the tree, and by counting the concentric rings within which the 
bullet lay, and making what was deemed proper allowance for the ball's 
penetration, it was believed that the shot must have been fired close upon 
two hundred years before. The incident is unquestionably authentic. 
Then, too, within a few years of the same time a knife or dirk thrust 
into a log or tree trunk was found in the heart of the wilderness in the 
town of Bellmont under conditions which were held by those who looked 
into the matter to point unmistakably to its having been left there by a 
European a great many years previously. But these and other similar 
incidents, however interesting and suggestive, are of course not proof 
that the county was visited by whites prior to 1750, and I have not been 
able to find any authentic record that confirms the conjecture or 
assumption. 

Sir John Johnston's Flight through the Adirondack^ 

The story of Sir John Johnston of Johnstown is well known in a gen- 
eral way, but that he journeyed through parts of Franklin county, and 
almost perished here from exposure and starvation, will, I think, be news 
to most people. He was an ardent supporter of George III. and a strong 
royalist, with a considerable number of Scottish retainers and an 
unbounded influence with the Mohawk Indians. In the winter of 1775 
General Schuyler met Sir John by appointment in the vicinity of his 
home, and compelled him to surrender two or three hundred stand of 
arms, with ammunition for them, and exacted his parole not to engage 
in hostilities against the Colonists. In May, 1776, reports having reached 
General Schuyler to the effect that Sir John was about to violate his 
parole, a large force of Colonists was sent from Albany to apprehend him ; 
but Tory or Indian friends having warned him of the approach of these, 
he fled with his retainers to Canada. Mr. James Croil, in his history of 
Dundas county, Ont., says that, being apprehensive that if he should 
pursue the Lake Champlain route he might come into collision with the 
Colonist army that was operating in that region, he directed his flight 
through the Adirondack's, descending the valley of the Baquette river to 
its confluence with the St. Lawrence, where he was met by Indians from 
Caughnawaga, and taken thence by boat to Montreal. The hardships 



6 Histoey or Franklin County 

endured in the wilderness are said to have been extreme, and food in 
sufficient quantities for so large a party impossible of procurement. 
Many of Sir John's followers were given land grants in Dundas county, 
and Mr. Croil having had opportunity to gather data from these or their 
descendants, his statement is to be presumed authentic. Moreover, a 
work compiled and published by one of Sir John's descendants corrob- 
orates it, though not routing the flight quite as definitely as Mr. Croil 
does. Sir John marshaled later a host of his Indian followers under the 
redoubtable Brandt, and also organized a force of regular soldiers known 
as the Royal Greens, and was a terrible scourge throughout the Mohawk 
valley. 

The Old Military Tract and the Macomb Purchase 

Every wilderness tract, every farm and even every village lot and gar- 
den plot in Franklin county is a part either of the so-called Old Military 
Tract or of the so-called Macomb's Purchase. The former comprehended 
all of the towns Burke, Chateaugay, Bellmont and Franklin, and the 
latter all of the fifteen other towns. A brief statement concerning these 
tracts should, therefore, be of popular interest. 

The Old Military Tract was set apart by act of the Legislature in 
1786 for satisfying out of the same the claims of persons entitled to 
bounty lands promised by a prior act for enlistment and three years' 
service in the Revolutionary army. Each private and non-commissioned 
officer was entitled under this latter act to five hundred acres of State 
lands, and commissioned officers from one thousand acres to five thou- 
sand five hundred acres each, dependent upon their rank. To meet such 
claims something like three-quarters of a million acres in the northern 
part of the State were appropriated, comprising the four towns named 
in Franklin county and also five towns in Essex and Clinton counties. 
But the Legislature had created other military tracts also for the like 
purpose, lying in the central part of the State and in Ohio, and, these 
latter being deemed more desirable, all land-bounty claims were filed 
against them, so that not a single acre of the tract in this region was 
ever pre-empted by a soldier. All of it was subsequently sold by the State 
to land speculators at about nine pence per acre. The names of those who 
became early owners in this tract which are now at all familiar here are 
William Bailey, Gerrit Smith. Guy Meigs, Samuel Wead and William 
Bell. The town of Bellmont (then including Franklin) takes its name 
from the latter, and Gerrit Smith's investment was largely with the idea 



Franklin County 7 

of providing homes for freed and fugitive slaves — Mr. Smith having 
been one of the most zealous and best known abolitionists in the period 
antedating the Civil War, and an ardent member of the society for 
colonizing the western coast of Africa with emancipated blacks. Not a 
few colored people were in fact settled upon a part of Mr. Smith's pur- 
chase, and some of their descendants are still residents of Franklin and 
Essex counties, though the severity of the climate, the inhospitable char- 
acter of the soil and the agricultural ignorance of the negroes combined 
to make the attempted colonization a failure. 

The Macomb Purchase, effected in 1791, included parts of Franklin, 
Lewis, Jefferson and Oswego counties, and all of St. Lawrence, together 
with most of the American islands in the St. Lawrence river, comprehend- 
ing nearly four million acres. The contract price made with the State 
was eight pence per acre, one-sixth part to be paid in cash, and the remain- 
der in five equal annual payments, without interest, but with a discount 
of six per cent, per year to be allowed to Macomb if he should anticipate 
any of the agreed payments. And, even at this price, the State benefited 
only by one-half of the amount, the other half having been allowed for 
services to the commissioners who made the sale. A condition of the 
grant or patent that was never met required that within seven years from 
its date there be one family actually settled on the tract for every six hun- 
dred and forty acres thereof; otherwise, the estate to " cease, determine 
and be void." Also the letters patent reserved to the State " all gold and 
silver mines, and five acres of every hundred acres " for highways. The 
contract of purchase provided further that there be deducted from the 
acreage to be paid for " all lakes whose area exceeds one thousand acres " 
and a "tract equal to six miles square in the vicinity of the village of 
St. Regis," which last exception was intended to provide for an Indian 
reservation. 

Macomb became financially involved before the transaction with the 
State was fully consummated, and by a series of transfers various sec- 
tions of the tract for which he had bargained became vested in a number 
of people — some of whom had been from the start silent partners with 
him in the deal. Included among these early owners were Daniel 
McCormick, William Constable, John McYickar. Hezekiah B. Pierre- 
pont and Richard Harison. The Constable holdings in Franklin county 
as partitioned were mainly in the central northern parts, the Pierrepont 
in the western, the Harison in the central, and the McCormick in the 
central and southern. Afterward Eay de la Chauniont. Michael Tlogan, 



8 History of Franklin County 

Luther Bradish and others came into ownership of considerable tracts 
through purchase from one or another of those named. 

These early land owners in the Old Military Tract and in Macomb's 
Purchase constituted so remarkable a group of men, both as regards 
character and abilities and their relation to the government of the State 
and to the business enterprises of their day, that it would be unpardon- 
able to omit brief sketches of them. 

Alexander Macomb was born in Ireland in 1748 ; came to America 
with his parents in 1755; located at Detroit, Mich., in 1772, where in 
thirteen years he amassed a fortune in the fur trade; removed to New 
York in 1785; married as a second wife a daughter of a partner of 
William Constable. His residence was on Broadway, below Trinity 
church, and at one time it was rented and occupied by Washington when 
he was President. Mr. Macomb served several terms in the Assembly of 
New York, and mingled in the highest social circles, counting among 
his intimate friends many of the foremost men of the nation. He failed 
in 1792 for a million dollars; was arrested and confined in jail for a 
time at the instance of some of his creditors ; re-established himself finan- 
cially; and failed again in 1812. General Alexander Macomb, who com- 
manded the land forces at the battle of Plattsburgh, was his son. Mr. 
Macomb died at Georgetown, D. C, in 1831. 

Daniel McCormick also was an Irishman, and among his closest friends 
and almost constant companions at his stately home on Wall street were 
William Constable, Bichard Harison, William Bell and Michael Hogan, 
some of whom were to be seen with him almost every afternoon on the 
porch of his house. His establishment Avas continually the scene of 
friendly dinner parties, at which the number of guests was always odd. 
Mr. McCormick was one of the most polished gentlemen in the city, and 
had the entree to the most exclusive social circles, as is shown by the 
fact that he was a guest at a dinner given by Mrs. John Jay to President 
Washington. He would not move from his Wall street home even when 
every other residence in the locality bad disappeared, and the district 
had been given over wholly to business establishments. He was president 
of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, grand treasurer of the 
grand lodge of Masons of the State of New York, a member of the Cham- 
ber of Commerce, and an alderman. A biographer says of him that he 
was old-fashioned, and clung tenaciously to accustomed habits and style 
of dress. He wore short breeches to the last, with white stockings and 
buckles, and powdered his hair. He was without a stain on his char- 
acter. He died in 1834, possessed of great wealth. 



Franklin County 9 

Michael Hogan, owner of Bombay, another Irishman, who had been a 
ship captain, sailing to every part of the globe, and speaking a number 
of languages, brought with him to New York in 1804 four hundred thou- 
sand English sovereigns, equivalent to two million dollars — an almost 
unheard of fortune in this country at that time. The money is under- 
stood to have been the dowry of Mrs. Hogan, who was a princess of 
India, and whom Mr. Hogan had married in the city of Bombay. Mr. 
Hogan established a store on the site afterward occupied by the old Astor 
House, and filled it with such a stock of costly merchandise as the city 
had then never seen. Afterward he became a ship-owner and importer, 
doing an immense business. He gave the grandest dinners known in 
New York, and a biographer says that he was the perfect Irish host and 
gentleman, commanding universal respect. He was a contributor to 
standard publications of his day. A number of his ships were captured 
by Great Britain in the war of 1812, involving him in financial 
embarrassment. A monument was erected to him in old Trinity 
churchyard, and afterward removed to Grace church. 

William Bell had been supercargo for William Constable in the 
latter's trading enterprises with China, and was deemed an authority of 
ultimate appeal in all matters relating to commercial business with 
Asia. 

A sketch of Luther Bradish, an up-standing figure in the politics 
and government of the State of New York three-quarters of a century 
ago, forms a separate chapter of this work. 

Robert Watts, a partner with Mr. Bradish in Moira holdings, and 
long a resident there, was of the New York family of that name, a 
number of whom were large merchants, and was related by marriage to 
General Philip Kearney. An elder Watts married the daughter of the 
Earl of Sterling. 

William Bailey, once owner of the greater part of Burke and Chateau- 
gay, and also the local agent for William Constable, was originally from 
New York city, possessed considerable means, and located in Chateau- 
gay in 1800. There he conducted a large farm, and built and operated 
an iron forge — the first in the county with the possible exception of 
the one in Westville. In 1810 three slaves were owned in Franklin 
county, and Mr. Bailey was one of the two owners — the other being 
Mr. Harison of Malone. Though I am not sure, it is my impression 
that Mr. Bailey had two slaves, and Mr. Harison one. In 1820 there 
was not a negro, bond or free, in the county. Mr. Bailey was the father 



10 History of Franklin County 

of Admiral Theodorus Bailey, the hero of the capture of New Orleans 
in our civil war. The admiral was horn in Chateaugay in 1805. Mr. 
Bailey was also the grandfather of the late Mrs. C. C. Whittelsey, of 
Malone. He represented Clinton county, a part of which Chateaugay 
then was, in the Assembly in 1802 and 1806, and in the latter year was 
also a judge of the court of common pleas for Clinton county. He 
removed from Chateaugay to Plattsburgh in 1811, and died at the 
latter place in 1810. 

Gerrit Smith, the radical abolitionist, and one of the operators of the 
famous " underground railroad," was said by Thurlow "Weed to be 
"the handsomest, the most attractive and the most intellectual man I 
have ever met." Mr. Smith is suspected of having quartered on his 
lands at or near North Elba, Essex county, some of the escaped slaves 
whom he guided to points of safety against recapture, and it is believed 
that a number of these were transported secretly through Franklin 
county to " stations " in Malone, and thence into Canada, via Fort 
Covington. 

So far as I have been able to ascertain, Hezekiah B. Pierrepont had 
no particular distinction except as a business man of large interests 
and varied experiences. He is said to have been always lenient and 
liberal with those who purchased lands from him in cases where they 
were unable to meet payments as provided in their contracts. 

John McVickar, born in Ireland, came to Xew York as a youth, and 
was under the guardianship of Daniel McCormick until of an age to 
rely upon himself. He entered the mercantile business in 1786, and 
in the course of a few years became one of the largest merchants and 
ship-owners in the city. The volume of his business was enormous, 
and a large part of it was the importation and sale of Irish linens and 
other Irish manufactures. So important to Irish industries were his 
purchases that upon the occasion of a visit that he made to the island 
it was a subject of general remark, and it was jokingly suggested that 
the lord lieutenant confer upon him the order of knighthood. Mr. 
McVickar also traded largely with China through his own ships. He 
was one of the founders of the Society of Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, 
a vestryman of Trinity Church, a director in a number of banks and 
insurance companies, and a member of the boards of managers of 
several benevolent and philanthropic institutions to be connected with 
which was deemed a great honor, as the appointments were invariably 
restricted to the very best men to be found in the city. Barrett's " Old 



Franklin Counts 11 

Merchants of New York " says that Mr. McYickar was possessed 
sound judgment and a nice sense of the highest commercial honor, and 
was proverbially generous in extending aid to merchants who were 
weaker than himself. A son married a daughter ( Euretta) of William 
Constable, and a daughter married William Constable, Jr. William 
McYickar, deceased, of Malone, who was the father of Mrs. C. \Y. 
Breed and Mrs. Ralph, was a descendant of John. 

James Donatianus de la Ray de Chaumont, owner of a third of a 
million acres in the Macomb Purchase, in which was included the 
township of Harrietstown which contains the village of Saranac Lake. 
was born in France in 1760, the son of Count de Chaumont, who was 
the zealous friend and helper of the United States during our war for 
independence. When Benjamin Franklin went to France as a com- 
missioner for the Colonies to enlist a French alliance, the French gov- 
ernment, though friendly, was not yet ready for an open break with 
Great Britain, and consequently denied Franklin's appeals and 
entreaties. Nevertheless it secretly encouraged Frenchmen of means 
and military capacity to act individually in our interest, and Count de 
Chaumont needed no urging to serve in this direction. He at once 
placed his hotel or chateau in the suburbs of Paris at the disposal of 
Franklin, stipulating only that no rent should be paid or obligation lie 
regarded as incurred until the Colonies should win their independence; 
and upon these terms Franklin made the establishment his office and 
home for years. Moreover, the count declined to accept an appointment 
as one of the ministers of France in order that he might remain free 
to assist America individually. He gave outright to Franklin in 1776 
a thousand barrels of gunpowder and other military stores, and there- 
after was untiringly active in buying ships, uniforms, arms, etc., for 
this country. His transactions along these lines ran into the millions 
of dollars, for much of which Franklin paid him at the time, or he 
found reimbursement through the sale of the prizes which John Paul 
Jones or. others captured. Nevertheless the operations embarrassed 
him sorely, and it was nearly twenty years later that Congress made a 
settlement with him. The son was in full accord with the father in 
this work, and it was to effect a settlement that the former came to the 
United States, where he remained for many years, became an American 
citizen, and formed intimate friendships with Gouvernenr Morris, 
William Constable and other eminent men of the time. Constable 
having sold the Chasanis tract in Lewis and Jefferson counties to a 
French syndicate, which planned to build cities on it and establish 



12 History of Franklin County 

manufacturing industries to compete with England's, Le Ray de 
Chaumont was put in charge of the proposition after it was seen that 
the original expectations regarding it could not be realized. He also 
made large purchases of lands himself from Constable, and brought 
thousands of mechanics and other operatives from France to settle on 
the tracts. For almost forty years he resided in Jefferson county, seek- 
ing to develop his lands, and engaging in various enterprises designed 
to be of public benefit. It was a corporation organized by him that 
built the first decent road into Franklin county, the old St. Lawrence 
turnpike, from Black River to Bangor. He died in France in 1840. 

William Constable, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1752, was left by his 
father in that city to be educated when the latter came to this country 
in 1762. The son followed a few years later, and joined the father 
near Schenectady, where he soon entered into business. There he and 
Alexander Ellice became friends, but the latter, being imbued with 
Tory proclivities, returned to England at the outbreak of war. It was 
doubtless from this association that Mr. Ellice came afterward into 
ownership of the Constable lands in Constable and Westville. Mr. 
Constable himself entered the Colonial army, and became aide to 
General Lafayette. Soon after the restoration of peace Mr. Constable 
again interested himself in mercantile affairs, opening an establishment 
in Philadelphia, which had a branch in Charleston, and thereafter his 
business ventures covered a wide range and were large and important. 
He traded extensively with the West Indies; built, owned and sailed 
ships to Havana and Asiatic ports ; became a partner in New York city 
with Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris; built and operated a large 
flouring mill at Yonkers ; speculated heavily in lands not only in New 
York, but also in Kentucky, Virginia and Georgia, and also in public 
funds. His fortune was large until heavy losses were incurred while he 
was in Europe, due to reckless indorsements by his brother, James, who 
had become a partner with him. Ogden Edwards eulogized Mr. Con- 
stable after his death in 1803 as a master spirit in every circle, even 
among the magnates of this and European countries, and declared that 
as a conversationalist he was unsurpassed. His mansion in New York 
is said to have been that of a prince, at which his friends always 
received princely treatment. After Richard Harison, he was intel- 
lectually probably the greatest of those who were owners in the so-called 
Macomb's Purchase, and apparently it was principally through associa- 
tion and friendship with him and Daniel McCormick that the others of 



Franklin County 13 

whom sketches have been given in preceding pages were drawn into 
investing in lands in this section. 

Francis Harison ( never spelled with two rs) queen's counsel, and 
direct descendant of Richard Harison, lord of Hurst, and the grand- 
father of Eichard, the proprietor of the township of Malone, came to 
New York in 1708 with Lord Lovelace, the then recently appointed 
Governor of the province, and two years later sheriff, afterward becom- 
ing a judge of the admiralty court and also recorder. The Han- 
sons were thus one of the earliest English families in New York, 
and the descendants are disposed to emphasize the fact that they are 
in no way related to the Round Head General Harrison, but are of 
cavalier ancestry. The Malone Richard Harison was born in New 
York in 1747, and at the age of thirteen entered King's College (now 
Columbia University) in a class of which he and John Jay, the eminent 
jurist and statesman, .twice Governor of New York, were the only 
members. The two remained friends and associates throughout their 
lives. Mr. Harison studied law after graduation from college, and was 
admitted to the bar as soon as he attained his majority. Almost immedi- 
ately he won success and distinction, which not only placed him in the 
front rank in his profession, but brought him wealth also. He was 
at one time the law partner of Alexander Hamilton. In a work by the 
then president of Columbia College, in 1847, he is named with Mr. 
Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Brockholst Livingston and two or three others 
as having given to the bar of his time an eminence of character and 
talent comparing favorably with the high standing of the bench, and 
as one of "its brightest ornaments." to which was added: "Richard 
Harison was the most accomplished scholar of the group. " and "he 
was, moreover, a sound lawyer." Historians generally of New York 
city, covering the period of Mr. Harison's activities, refer to him as 
" that great lawyer " or " that great man." He succeeded James Kent 
as recorder, " and his refinement and urbanity were as conspicuous on 
the bench as in private life." As bearing upon his scholarship, it is 
told that, naturally a student, he was a thorough master of Greek, 
Latin and French, and a reader of widest range : even after reaching 
his seventy-second year, he took up the study of Hebrew, and mastered 
that language. Besides having been recorder of New York, he was 
secretary of the board of regents of the University of New York from 

1787 to 1790; member of Assembly in 1787 and 1789; a member in 

1788 with Hamilton, Jay and others of the convention which adopted 



14 History of Franklin County 

the federal constitution; and from 1789 to 1801 United States attorney 
for the district of Xew York. Through the kindness of his greatgrand- 
son, William Beverley Harison, I am privileged to have before me as I 
write a photographic copy of his commission as United States attorney, 
signed by George Washington, and also a photographic copy of a per- 
sonal letter from President Washington, transmitting the commission, 
from which I quote : " The high importance of the judicial system in 
our national government makes it an indispensable duty to select such 
characters to fill the several offices in it as would discharge their 
respective duties with honor to themselves and advantage to the 
country." Mr. Harison was nominated to the Senate by President 
Washington to be judge of the United States district court, but declined 
the office. He died in Xew York December 7, 18.'?9. 

Bearing in mind the conditions in Franklin county as set forth in 
previous pages, and considering that, though Lake Champlain and the 
St. Lawrence river were principal avenues along which the forces of 
England and France moved and fought almost continuously in the half 
century of conflict which those powers waged for dominion in America, 
Clinton county had not a permanent settler until 1763, and St. Law- 
rence none until 1792 with the exception of the mission at Fort La 
Presentacion (now Ogdensburg), the fact that it was more than three 
centuries after the voyage of Columbus before there was a single white 
home within the present limits of Franklin county is less occasion for 
remark than the fact that one was established even then. It certainly 
was not expectation or hope of muling here gold and silver loot and 
mines, such as had enriched Spain from Mexico and Peru, nor yet a 
search for adventure or the dream that the climate was mild or the soil 
especially fertile, that induced our first immigration. The impelling 
motive, then, could hardly have been other than the spirit of restlessness 
which in all countries and in all ages has kept the tide of migration and 
the course of empire and civilization moving westward — now in prose- 
cution of war, now for attainment of freedom of worship, and again 
merely in the search and striving for cheaper lands and for larger 
opportunities in life. The latter must have been the impulse in this 
case, for the men who came knew in advance that for a time at least 
conditions here must make for dire privation, for arduous labor, and 
for only a bare living at the best. Nevertheless, they came, the sturdy 
manhood of New England, with devotion to home, with belief in the 
church and the school, and with fidelity to conscience. While probably 
none of them quite so phrased it. they believed, too, " in the sovereign 



xklix County 15 

fatherhood of God and the equal brotherhood " and for that some 

of them had fought at Bennington. Quebec, Ticonderoga, Saratoga or 
Yorktown. 

Chabai the Pionee 

We who enjoy to-day the fruits of the labors and the traits of char- 
after of Franklin county's pioneers can not too highly estimate their 
worth, nor too greatly venerate their memories. Unlettered though 
some of them were, lacking the refinements which association and 
attrition with others induce, and environed but rudely in all respects, 
they yet p jveat natural intelligence, were endowed with shrewd 

judgment which hard experience made practical and far-seeing, and 
were enterprising to a degree. To these qualities and to the sacrifices 
and privations which our ancestors voluntarily imposed upon them- 
- beyond those which i compelled had tl - n to con- 

sider only the then present and then jel 3, i stead of having looked to 
the future, Franklin county owes much in the line of material develop- 
ment, beneficent institutions, and rank in enterprise, intelligence and 
character. As a boy it was my privilege to know some of those who had 
converted Franklin county's forests into farms, established our churches 
and founded our schools : and. thongh of course there were exceptions, 
their simple and correct habits and walk in life, their virtues, their 
intense convictions and inflexible loyalty to principle gave them a r 
and sterling worth that commands unbounded respect : and I should 
feel that a duty* had been undischarged if this brief tribute were not 
here paid to them. 

Erection of Franklin County 

The lands comprising Franklin county were originally a part of 
Albany county, which once embraced a portion of the State of Maine, 
all of the State of Vermont, and nearly all of that part of New York 
which lies west of the Hudson and north of the Mohawk. Clinton 
count}" was erected from Washington, one of Albany's offshoots, in 
1?88, and then, and by subsequent extensions, included all of its 
present self, and substantially all of Essex and Franklin and a part of 
St. Lawrence. What is now Franklin county consisted at that time of 
parts of the towns Champlain, Peru and Plattsbnrgh. Chateaugay 
(spelled in the act creating it, " Chat □ from Platts- 

bnrgh and Champlain in 1799, and in 1801 and again in 1*0? and 
1808 there were annexations to it. so that with Malone it was coex- 
re with Franklin connty, comprising an area of almost seven- 
teen hundred square miles. For twelve years after the first settlement 



16 History of Franklin County 

here we were one with Clinton as a county. All real estate records were 
kept at Plattsburgh, and all court business had to be transacted there. 
Even yet not a few of the records of early conveyances of lands in 
Franklin county are to be found solely in the office of the clerk of 
Clinton county, only some of the more important having been certified 
to the clerk's office in Malone, and so made easily accessible here. For 
a time the arrangement as indicated occasioned little inconvenience or 
annoyance, as the population was scant and its interests so slight that 
public records and litigation concerned the inhabitants but seldom and 
insignificantly. Immigration continuing at an increasing rate, how- 
ever, the condition became irksome and insupportable, developing a 
demand for separation from Clinton and for the erection of a new 
county, particularly because jury duty and attendance at court as wit- 
nesses were onerous and costly. At that time fees for jurors in courts 
of sessions and common pleas were but one shilling in each case in 
which they were sworn, and in the supreme court and circuit court the 
same when sworn, with an allowance of six shillings per day for time 
spent in going to and returning from the place of service. Witnesses 
received two shillings per day. This meant that a juror drawn or a 
witness summoned from any part of what is now Franklin county had 
to travel to and from Plattsburgh, usually on foot, pay all of his 
expenses, and receive perhaps a dollar and a half at the minimum or 
possibly three or four dollars as a maximum for his week's time and 
outlay. Now a juror from, say, Tupper Lake, serving at Malone, would 
be paid for a week's attendance something over twenty dollars, and a 
witness in a criminal case about eight dollars. 

In 1808 the Legislature was petitioned to erect this county, Avith 
Norfolk suggested for its name. Barely a month later (March 11th) 
the prayer of the petition was granted by the enactment of an act to 
divide Clinton county, but with the name of the county set off there- 
from to be Franklin instead of Norfolk. Four other counties were 
erected the same day, all but one by chapters earlier than that creating 
Franklin; and the latter became the forty-first county of New York. 
The act of erection provided, in brief, that there be established the 
county of Franklin, with boundaries the same as those now existing. 
except that in 1822 one township was detached from Franklin and added 
to Essex, and in 1913 a tract of five square miles was taken from St. 
Lawrence at its southeastern part and annexed to Franklin, so that the 
latter might complete a highway, in which St. Lawrence is not especi- 
ally interested, to connect Tupper Lake with roads leading straight 
through the wilderness to Utica and Albany. The act erecting our 



Franklin County 17 

county further provided that there be created here "a court of common 
pleas and general sessions of the peace," the terms of which should be 
in April and October in each year at the academy in Malone. (This 
court was equivalent in most respects to the county court as created 
by the constitution of 1846, and as before the " side judges " or jus- 
tices of sessions were abolished, though its jurisdiction was somewhat 
broader, and the "first judge" was not required to be a lawyer.) The 
act authorized the supervisors of the county to raise by tax on the 
freeholders and inhabitants of the county the sum of two hundred and 
fifty dollars, " to be applied and appropriated by them to strengthen 
and secure one room in the said academy as a gaol for said county," 
and empowered the sheriff and other officers to confine their prisoners 
there or in the jail of the county of Clinton as they might elect; and 
thus the academy building became at once an institution for instruc- 
tion, a temple of justice, and a place of detention for debtors and for 
punishment and correction of evil doers, as well as serving for a few 
years as a house of worship. This so-called academy building (the 
institution was never chartered as an academy) was a two-story frame 
structure, and stood a little to the north and west of the present 
academy building. It was known as "the Harison Academy," and at 
one time went into disuse for school purposes, when it was converted 
into a tenement house, and was so occupied at least as late as 1844. 
One of the rooms in it was rented by a tenant to the village band for 
a meeting place for practising, and for a time the Odd Fellows had 
their lodge room on the second floor of the building. Later it was 
again converted into a school building, moved a short distance to the 
west, and used for the higher grades of our village schools until about 
1870. Some of the teachers who were in charge there were Cyrus 
Bates, Cyrus Thomas, Sidney Sayles and Marcus Johnson. Fifty-odd 
years ago students there would drop waste paper between the studding, 
where the plaster was broken, and then throw a lighted match into the 
cavity. Thus every few weeks school would have to be dismissed because 
the building was on fire. 

The act of erection further changed the boundaries of Chateaugay 
as well as those of Malone, detaching from the former certain townships 
which were to remain a part of Clinton county, and annexing to both 
Chateaugay and Malone (then called Harison) those parts of the towns 
Plattsburgh and Peru which extended to the present St. Lawrence 
county eastern boundary. It also provided that Franklin county should 
be considered a part of the eastern district of the State, and that returns 



18 History of Franklin County 

of elections for State officers, members of both Houses of the Legisla- 
ture and representatives in Congress be made to the clerk of Clinton 
county. As judges, sheriffs and county clerks were all then appointive 
by the Governor and Council, a consequence of this provision is that 
there is no record' in the county clerk's office at Malone of the county's 
vote until 1822. The eastern district included in 1808 the counties of 
Albany, Eensselaer, Saratoga, Montgomery, Washington, Essex, Clinton 
and Franklin, and was entitled to a representation of eleven Senators. 
In 1815 the district was changed to exclude Albany, and to add Herki- 
mer and Lewis, with a representation of eight Senators. 

Franklin County's Growth 
As illustrative of the conditions which had occasioned the movement 
for a separation from Clinton county, the growth of our own county 
may appropriately be shown at this point. Chateaugay, all uninhabited 
in early 1796, had come to contain a population of 443 at the date of 
the census in 1800, which had increased in 1810 to 625, notwithstanding 
its partition in the meantime to make Malone, and that of the county 
as a whole to 2,710, though in the ensuing four years (due to appre- 
hension of war and to its effects when it actually occurred) there was a 
loss of 151. The population of the county and of its several towns in 
1810 and in certain subsequent years was: 

When 

COUNTY formed From what taken 1810 1820 1830 1840 I860 1000 1910 1915 

Complete 1808 Clinton county 2,719 4,439 11,312 16,518 30,837 42,842 44,534 46,181 

Altamont 1890 Waverly 3,045 4,691 4,480 

Bangor 1812 Dickinson 370 1,076 1,289 2,520 2,221 1,946 2,179 

Bellmont 1833 Chateaugay 472 1,376 2,414 2,341 2,031 

Bombay* 1833 Fort Covington 1,146 2,440 2,742 2,588 1,337 

Brandon 1828 Bangor 316 531 794 938 872 860 

Brighton 1858 Duane 208 706 741 777 

Burke 1844 Chateaugay 2,240 1,936 1,772 1,835 

Chateaugay 1799 C h a m p 1 a i n and 

Plattsburgh 625 828 2,016 2,824 3,183 2,723 2,840 2,903 

Constable 1807 Malone t 916 637 693 1,122 1,680 1,266 1,323 1,331 

Dickinson 1808 Malone 411 495 446 1,005 1,917 1,691 1,609 1,514 

Duane 1828 Malone 247 324 279 312 300 255 

Fort Covington. . . 1817 Constable 979 2,901 2,092 2,757 2,043 2,028 2,045 

Franklin 1836 Bellmont .' 192 1,105 1,501 1,447 1,378 

Harrietstownt... 1841 Duane 340 3,390 4,753 4,716 

Malonef 1805 Chateaugay 767 1,130 2,207 3,229 6,565 10,009 10,154 11,255 

Moira 1828 Dickinson 791 962 1,798 2,484 2,346 2,413 

Santa Clara 1888 Brandon..., 580 675 525 

Waverly 1880 Dickinson 1,615 2,170 2,133 

Westville 1829 Constable 619 1,028 1,635 1,237 1,121 1,128 



* Includes 1,253 Indians in 1900 and 1,249 in 1910. The number of Indians shown by the enumeration of 1915 is 
1,086, but undoubtedly should be nearly 1,500. See chapter on St. Regis, 
t Then Harison. 
t Part of Brandon afterward added. 



Franklin County 19 

The decrease in population during the war of 1812 and in the years 
immediately preceding was due to these facts : There was a settlement 
of Indians in the county, all of whom had been at one time British 
wards. On contiguous territory lying in Canada were an equal or 
greater number belonging to the same tribe who were still British, and 
though this people had had no sanguinary record in three-quarters of a 
century then past, and, indeed, most of those dwelling within Franklin 
county had been American in sympathy during the war of the revolu- 
tion, they were nevertheless Indians, and a hundred years ago the mere 
name suggested savagery, bloodthirstiness and rapine. It was known, 
too, that for some time preceding the declaration of war British agents 
had been successfully inciting Indians along the Northwestern frontier 
to outrages upon the American whites in that section, and rumor 
magnified and distorted real conditions there and everywhere adjacent 
to Canada. The effect was utter demoralization, and it is told that 
many times when false alarms were given, or even at sight of an 
Indian's footprints, the settlers would be seized with panic, and flee to 
the woods with their wives and children for hiding. Similarly, though 
more quietly, the Indians themselves suffered, as knowledge that their 
appearance away from their reservation would be certain to occasion 
alarm on the part of the whites, if not collision with them, and operated 
to restrict their movements and to prevent their customary hunting 
trips. But as a matter of fact not only was there no Indian outbreak 
here, but there was never a real indication that one was meditated. 
Nevertheless, so strong was the belief that one was certain to occur that 
some of the more timid settlers abandoned their homes, removing to 
localities which were thought to be safer, and undoubtedly considerable 
numbers who had contemplated coming here were deterred by appre- 
hension from so doing. As indicative of the state of affairs, General 
Clark Williamson, a man of exceptional determination and intrepid 
courage, came to Malone in 1809 and purchased the farm near the 
Junction which was for so long a time his. home, but, disquieted by the 
general conviction of Indian outbreaks, deemed it imprudent to 
remain. Returning to Vermont, it was a number of years before he 
felt justified in again coming and establishing his home here. The 
instance is probably only one among many that were similar. 

Between 18G0 and 1865 the county lost 2,692 in population, or nine 
per cent., because of a diminished birth rate during the period of the 
civil war, and because many of the large number of men here who 
entered the Union army gave their lives to the cause, or settled 



20 History of Franklin County 

elsewhere instead of returning to their homes after their terms of 
enlistment had expired. 

In the thirty years from 1860 to 1890 the county as a whole made 
a net gain of only 7,273 in population, the increases having been 
principally in Bellmont, Harrietstown, Malone, Moira and Waver ly, 
and actual losses having been experienced by Bombay, Chateaugay, Fort 
Covington and Westville — some of them considerable. Dickinson also 
had an apparent loss, but it was occasioned largely, if not altogether, 
by the town's partition for the erection of Waverly. Chateaugay's 
decrease was due principally to the fact that several hundred residents 
removed to Colorado ; and it seems probable that other losses are to be 
explained by the fact that families are generally smaller than formerly, 
which is strikingly illustrated by school records and conditions. For 
illustration, there is one district in Burke in which the school used to 
be of considerable size that has not a single child of school age, and 
there are a number more scattered through the county where similar 
conditions exist, though perhaps not quite as extreme. The exact facts 
for the county are not in my possession, but in the State as a whole 
there are 15 schools which have but one pupil each, 86 in which there 
are but two each, 900 in which there are not more than five each, and 
600 more with not over seven each. Franklin county undoubtedly has 
its share of these nearly 1,600 districts where the laughter of children 
and the sunshine of their presence have almost disappeared, and I think 
we may charge largely to " race suicide " the losses which the census 
shows for some of the towns. 

The percentage of increase in the county's population from 1800 
to 1810 was 518 ; then to 1820, 73 per cent. ; then to 1830, 42 per cent. ; 
then to 1840, 32 per cent. ; and from 1860 to 1910, about 44 per cent. 
During the half century from 1860 to 1910 the population of most of 
the other distinctively rural counties of the .State remained either 
stationary or actually decreased. It should be remarked, however, that 
Franklin's growth in this time was but little, if any, along agricultural 
lines, and was due principally to the development in Malone, to the very 
marked progress of Harrietstown (attributable to special and in some 
respects peculiar causes), and to lumbering operations in the south- 
western towns. 

While the contemplated scope of this sketch is to make it almost 
entirely narrative, with little statistical cumbering, it yet seems essen- 
tial (inasmuch as not all even of our own people know our boundaries 
and dimensions accurately, and because an " outlander " may possibly 



Fraxklin County 21 

chance occasionally to scan these pages) that they carry just a touch 
geographical and climatic. 

Franklin county lies in the extreme northern part of the State, 
bounded on the north by Canada, with the St. Lawrence river sweeping 
its northwestern corner for a distance of two or three miles where the 
St. Regis Indian reservation juts westward beyond the line marking 
our seemingly natural boundary there; on the west by St. Lawrence 
county; on the south by Hamilton and Essex; and on the east by 
Essex and Clinton. It has an area of 1,678 square miles, of which 
about 270 square miles are under State ownership. The extreme length 
of the county from north to south is along its western border, and, 
according to Tupper's survey made about 1798, is Go 1/8 miles, but 
Colvin questions Tupper's accuracy in this respect, and thinks that the 
distance is slightly less. A measurement on the east, from the south- 
east corner of Harrietstown, to the Canada line makes (50 1/8 miles. 
The county's greatest width is about thirty-three miles. At the date 
of its settlement it was densely wooded throughout ; in the northern 
part with giant pine, and elsewhere with hard and soft timber generally 
intermingled. Clearings for farms and homes, the manufacture of 
potash and charcoal, vast lumbering operations, the cutting of pine for 
rafting to Montreal for conversion into ship masts, and the sweep of 
fire have denuded great tracts, though there still remain large areas 
that are well timbered, and which the best interests of the county 
demand shall be protected and forever preserved, because it can not 
now be thought that larger possibilities of prosperity, wealth and 
growth lie in destructive operations in the Adirondacks than in con- 
servation, to the end that the region may be kept a pleasure resort and 
a sanatorium. 

No considerable part of the county is without its surface broken by 
hills, though Constable, Westville, Fort Covington, Bombay, Bangor 
and Moira contain broader reaches of level country than are to be 
found elsewhere. The southern townships are thickly studded with 
mountains, and large parts of them must always remain uncultivated 
and waste lands, though even here valleys also abound which may be 
successfully farmed except when frosts blast and blight, as they are 
apt to do even in the summer months at the altitude of 1,400 to 1,700 
feet, which is that of the settled parts of most of our Adirondack towns. 
Some of these altitudes as shown by United States surveys are: Loon 
Lake 1,712 feet, Mountain View 1,498 feet, Lower Saranac Lake 1,534 



22 History of Franklin County 

feet, Upper Saranac Lake 1,571 feet, Saranac Lake village about 1,600 
feet, Malone at the county clerk's office 730 feet, Paul Smith's 1,640 
feet, Eaquette Pond 1,542 feet, Eainbow Lake 1,668 feet, and St. Eegis 
Falls 1,235 feet. 

In portions of some of the northern towns clay predominates; in too 
many localities the plains of considerable area on which pine once 
flourished are sandy and all but hopelessly barren, though generally the 
soil is a good loam, and when intelligently and faithfully worked pro- 
duces abundantly. Only of late has intelligent and practical considera- 
tion been given to the question of the kinds of crops to which the soil 
and climate are best adapted, and, therefore, farmers have not always 
realized the best possible results. In earlier years flax was a staple 
because the product was required in the domestic economy of that 
period, when all of the cloth used in a family was manufactured in the 
home. But farming generally was a hit or miss business, and accurate 
knowledge of how to prosecute it scientifically was neither possessed nor 
sought. Within the past few years, however, a Farm Bureau, with a 
competent and expert instructor, has been maintained, and advice has 
been given to individual applicants when requested, experiments, con- 
ducted with results accurately registered, and also in a general way 
information has been imparted by lectures and through the medium of 
circulars and newspapers. The one particular aim of the bureau 
instructor, besides teaching the most advantageous methods, is to 
establish unmistakably the lines along which farmers should especially 
concentrate their attention and energies with a view to economical 
management and the largest recompense. The single product in which 
Franklin outranks all other counties in New York, both as regards 
quantity of yield per acre and quality, is potatoes; and it is sought now 
to persuade farmers to make a specialty of raising these for sale as 
seed to other localities. The county has been found to be exceptionally 
adapted to oats also, and lands in proximity to villages or to summer 
resorts are profitably worked for the production of small fruits and 
early vegetables. 

The principal streams are the Salmon, the Saranac, the Chateaugay, 
the two branches of the St. Eegis for some distance from their sources, 
and again after they join for a few miles before uniting with the St. 
Lawrence. The Eaquette also, near its head, has its course for a time 
in our county, and barely cuts a corner of the St. Eegis reservation near 
its mouth. None of these is navigable except for light-draft launches 



Franklin County 123 

in their still reaches and expansions, with the exception of the St. Regis 
and the Salmon for a few miles above the points where they join the 
St. Lawrence. All are characterized by rapids throughout the greater 
part of their courses, with occasional falls of considerable height, and 
are capable of a development to afford many fine water powers. 

Lakes and j)onds are innumerable. Among those of first importance, 
because of extent of area, scenic beauty and fame as sporting and 
summer resorts, are Lower Chateaugay Lake, Meacham Lake, Loon 
Lake, the several St. Eegis waters, the Saranacs, Raquette Pond and 
Tupper Lake. Meacham was named for a hunter and trapper of Hop- 
kinton and Waverly, who frequented it, and whose record of deer, wolves 
and catamounts killed almost challenges belief, and Tupper for a sur- 
veyor whose work in the vicinity dates back more than a century. 

Deposits of iron have been located at many points, and some of them 
partially developed, though not one, so far as I have been able to learn, 
ever proved profitable. A great difficulty in prosecuting such an enter- 
prise in pioneer times was the enormous expense of transportation to 
market, and, as regards the one mining prospect (at Owl's Head) which 
was deemed for a generation to afford the best promise of any in the 
county, exploration with a diamond drill has demonstrated that while 
the ore near the surface ran sixty to eighty per cent, pure iron of a 
superior quality, at a greater depth the percentage decreased to less 
than thirty. 

Hundreds of claims of discovery of gold and silver in Franklin 
county have been filed by prospectors with the Secretary of State at 
Albany, and in at least one instance, near the village of St. Regis Falls, 
considerable development work was done only a few years ago in a 
search for gold. An advertisement published in the Palladium about 
1835 invited investment in a copperas mine known to the advertiser, 
but so far as I have heard the existence of such a mine was never other- 
wise manifested. Belief that there is lead in the vicinity has been 
insistent for half a century or more. The late Albon Man, a gentleman 
of the highest character and of scientific attainments, used to hunt 
before the civil war at Indian Lake and Mountain View (then known 
as Round Pond and State Dam), a dozen miles south of Malone, with 
" Old Aleck," a St. Regis Indian, for guide and camp worker, and the 
writer remembers distinctly having been told by him that upon more 
than one occasion " Old Aleck " had sneaked off from camp, and after 
a few hours' absence brought back quantities of pure galena, which they 
reduced and cast into bullets. Of course Major Man did not pretend 



24 History of Franklin County 

to know whether the galena was from a cache or from a mine in the 
neighborhood, but " Old Aleck " insisted that it was procured from the 
latter, that the members of his tribe had always obtained their supply 
of lead from it, and that they would kill him if he were to reveal the 
place of deposit to a white. Old settlers in the vicinity used to tell of 
the same Indian appearing at their homes from time to time with 
native lead which he claimed to have brought from a mine in the 
mountains ; and it is certain that men who have had unquestioning faith 
in the existence of such a mine have spent an aggregate of months, and 
perhaps of years, in unavailing search for it. 

Climatic conditions a hundred years ago must have corresponded 
closely to those of the present, for these, though varying widely from 
year to year, hold practically the same average over long periods. Our 
fathers, therefore, suffered or enjoyed virtually the same extremes of 
heat and cold, and the same recurrences of excess and deficiency in 
precipitation of rain and snow that are the portion of the present 
generation, which are those of the temperate zone at the forty-fourth 
and forty- fifth degrees of latitude. If these carry discomfort in their 
extremes, particularly in the low temperatures, though even then our 
drier atmosphere mitigates the severity, there is the compensation that 
but rarely does drouth or rainfall interfere with seed time and harvest, 
that devastating floods are almost unknown, and that the whirlwind, 
tornado or cyclone strikes hardly once in a generation, and then 
invariably over only a limited tract in length and breadth Tested by 
a yearly average, or certainly with the omission of three or four winter 
months, it is the conviction of most of our people that nowhere in the 
world are there preferable climatic conditions. 

Pioneer Conditions and Practices 

These the conditions and the environment of the pioneers, what were 
their general and individual circumstances and activities? For fifteen 
years immediately succeeding the first settlement no event of par- 
ticular moment or of real public consequence is known to have occurred 
save the prompt establishment of schools and churches — which was a 
procedure as of course by men from New England — and save also the 
erection of the county and of new towns. Nior did the formation of the 
county count for much until later, because all county officers were 
appointive, and in the choice of representatives to the Legislature and 
to Congress we were still in effect a part of Clinton. Practically all 



Franklin County 25 

else was individual and domestic, and also commonplace for that time, 
extraordinary and even impossible as it would be in the present. Apart 
from an occasional saw-mill, tannery and grist-mill, industries there 
were none, nor were there fraternal bodies save for two Masonic lodges, 
or organizations of any sort other than governmental and religious to 
afford diversion or to promote acquaintanceship and social association. 
Dwellings were of logs, often little better than huts. There wasn't a 
stove in the county, and the conveniences in the household, the shop 
and on the farm that are to-day deemed indispensable had not even 
been shaped in the minds of inventors. Matches were unknown until 
1827 or later, and fire was made by use of the flint and tinder when it 
had not been preserved by covering coals in the ashes on the hearth. 
For lights the tallow clip, or possibly a lamp fed with animal oil, was 
the best that any one had, and many may have had to depend upon a 
mere wick in a saucer of grease, or upon the pine knot or pitch-pine 
torch. For the most part, flour was from rye instead of from wheat, 
and had to be brought from Plattsburgh over execrable roads until 
crude mills were built, one of which is said to have been only a mortar 
and pestle arrangement, the mortar a bowl hollowed in a stump, and 
the pestle depending from the limb of a tree. Cloth was exclusively of 
home production, the wool or flax being spun and woven by wife, 
mother or daughter, and all of the family clothing was also of home 
manufacture ; often so clumsy and ill-fitting that it used to be said that 
it could not be told by looking at a boy plodding along the road or 
path "whether he was going to or returning from school." Shoe- 
making and repairing, where each head of a house did not himself serve 
the family needs in such respect, was an itinerant occupation, the 
cobbler traveling from house to house, and doing his work wherever he 
found a customer. Building was generally accomplished by " bees," 
the men of an entire neighborhood, or, if the structure were very large, 
of practically the entire county, assembling for a " raising," and 
" making a day of it." Upon these occasions rum or whiskey was 
freely supplied, the local distilleries making it easy and inexpensive to 
procure. The price was perhaps twenty cents per gallon. Moreover, 
it was customary in general stores to have a pail of whiskey on the 
counter, and customers were free to partake of it at a cent or two per 
glass. There was then no internal revenue tax on liquors, and it is 
this that makes present higher prices. Malone has had five distilleries, 
and Fort Covington and Moira at least one each. The late Sidney P. 



26 History of Franklin County 

Bates, M. D., was working as a boy for the late Deacon Leonard Conant 
at the time when the latter was to have a barn raising, and was sent to 
" whiskey hollow," north of the village of Malone, for a supply of 
liquor for the occasion. He bought three gallons, which was a rather 
unusual quantity, and in telling of the incident in a letter to the Pal- 
ladium in 1883 the doctor explained that the neighbors had been boast- 
ing that they were going " to drink the deacon dry," which would have 
disgraced him, and therefore it was thought necessary to have the 
quantity equal or exceed the drinking capacity of the workers. In this 
period of changed sentiment on the temperance question it is hardly 
comprehensible that only two or three generations ago it could have 
been regarded as not a cause of reproach to a company of staid and 
respectable citizens if they drank to the limit of their capacity, while a 
church deacon would be in actual disgrace were he to fail to provide an 
ample supply of whiskey to satisfy their wants. About 1835, however, 
temperance societies began to be formed in the county, lecturers were 
engaged from abroad, and a remarkable agitation for abstinence con- 
tinued rather actively for a number of years. It is amusing now to read 
some of the reports of such meetings and the discussions had therein. 
At first the form of pledge proposed carried a number of conditions 
and times when it was not to be binding, but as sentiment became 
aroused and crystallized it was made stronger and called for teetotalism. 
Upon the occasion of such " raisings " the stronger and more agile 
men, desisting for a time from their labor or when the work was 
finished, would engage in rough contests to determine which possessed 
the greatest lifting power or the greatest skill in wrestling, or there 
were " tugs of war " and other tests of physical prowess. 

Money Scarcity 

Otherwise pioneer life was all grim earnest, almost unintermittent 
toil, privation, and poverty without much pauperism. In 1800 there 
were but nine hundred post-offices in all the United States (less than 
twenty times the number now to be foimd in Franklin county alone), 
postage stamps did not come into general use until after 1847, and 
postal rates for considerable distances were so high as to be practically 
prohibitive for poor people, so that even if our ancestors had had the 
time to spare and the facilities for engaging in correspondence they 
would scarcely have acquired the habit. There were no magazines or 
local newspapers, and but few books. Of actual money there was next 



Fraxklix County 27 

to none in circulation except during the period of the war of 1812 and 
for a time immediately subsequent, when the pay of the soldiers 
stationed at Fort Covington and Malone found its way into local dis- 
tribution; and the little that the inhabitants found it possible to scrape 
together in the course of a year had all to be applied in the payment of 
taxes or for the purchase of such supplies as could be procured only from 
outside of the county. A striking illustration of this condition is 
found in the fact that in 1827 Northern Constellation Lodge, F. and 
A. M., of Malone, which had been chartered in 1806 with about thirty 
members, addressed a memorial to the grand lodge, reciting that though 
the quarterly dues exacted by the latter had been paid to 1824. but 
only by applying in part the initiation fees and the charity fund to that 
purpose in order to meet the obligations of members who lacked the 
means to pay for themselves, such dues had then become three years in 
arrears, and even the better circumstanced brethren would be dis- 
tressed to meet the demand, while the poorer were utterly unable to 
respond. It was further represented in the memorial that the cir- 
culating medium here had nearly vanished, and in 1833, partly because 
of the anti-Masonic agitation and in part because money could not be 
had, the charter was forfeited for non-payment of dues. The late 
Michael S. Mallon confirmed this condition of money scarcity by his 
recollection that even as late as 1845 about all the real money that he 
ever saw was silver pieces which Obadiah T. Hosford, then an inn- 
keeper on the site of the present Howard Block, used continually to 
clink together. Though in some cases distilleries paid cash for grain, 
the manufacture and sale of potash was about the sole means whereby 
it could be had, other commodities being disposable only in exchange 
for such merchandise as comprised the primitive and scanty stocks of 
the few local tradesmen. 

The Making of Potash 

The story of potash, interesting in itself, will bear recital and ampli- 
fication because the product meant so much to this section in pioneer 
days. Its manufacture was our first industry. The name is derived 
from ashes, from which alone it was formerly produced, and from pot, 
in which the lye was boiled to dryness. Black salts is a synonym. In 
earliest operations each settler was himself the manufacturer through 
all of the stages — felling the timber so that it would lie in heaps, 
burning it, gathering the ashes and leaching them, boiling down the 
rye, and hauling the product to market. The labor must have been 



28 1 1 rsTom of Pb \n m in Cot! \ rs 

prodigious, as thirty cords of wood are required for the making ot a 
tou of ashes, which yields onlj about a sixth of a tou of potash. A.sh- 
eries sprang up later and came to handle the business generally, though 
individuals continued in many cases to >1>> the primary work them 
selves usually leasing a po1 from au asherj at the rental price of one 
dollar per month. The asheries received ashes through individual 
delivery :it their doors, or gathered their supply with their own loams. 
Ashes produced in the home commanded a considerably better price 
(usually twelve cents per bushel) than the field product, with which a 
deal o( dirt was commonly mixed, and which sold a1 from five to 
eight cents per bushel. In not exceptional cases the asheries bought 
oiash from individual makers, and converted it into pearlash. An 
ashen which continued to operate long after the industry had ceased 
to l>e general, and which many o( us readily remember, was that of the 
late B, V. Jewett, north o( North Bangor village. It kept a number of 
teams scouring the county continuously for house ashes. 

Elm and ash give the largest yield of ashes, and an operator who 
cleared a heavily elm-timbered tract in Bangor used to say that he 
ollar bill at the ro< ?ers tree, 

The business oi producing vegetable potash as a commercial propo- 
sition has practically disappeared, owing to tho facts that the labor 
cos would be prohibitive even if timber had not become too valuable 
to hum. and also to mineral potash having come into general use 
through the discover) in 1 so: of a practicable process for separating it 
from salt deposits in Germany, (Ninety or a hundred years ago the 
ping was three shillings a cord, and an item in the Pal- 
ladium in l> ; thai a young man in Malone had chopped and 
piled, six < rds one day.) The vegetable potash is. 1 believe, still 
product some of the wilder parts oi Canada and in Russia, and in 
Michigan and. Wisconsin from the refuse of sugar cane and beet sugar 
cries, but only in small quantities. The extreme price for it when 
in this county was extensive was one hundred dollars 
per to . \ pi that during the embargo pr« the war of IS 10 it 
times ih. \s the usual price was sixtj to eighty 
dollars per to- . hundred dollar- : is easily 

tivity the ante-war values must 
have been to flu makers - tiers, some account of which a: 
- - 'or. 

mes 1 v ' - ' from salt mines. 
has - Until the outbreak in 1914 of the awful 



- 

late 

used 

1 
/ 

their 

I 

tt told 1 thai 

arket 

with Montreal 1 

Ho 

■ 
which .eral- 

an not pocsiblj a and graphic a picture a* definite 



30 Histowy of Franklin County 

description by those who were actually in and of the life, and into whose 
minds experience had burned unforgettable memories. While no pen 
picture o\ the county's earliesl days is discoverable, the county and 
its conditions then could not haw been materially different from those 
that obtained a quarter of a century later, except that originally the 
reaches of unbroken forests were wider, clearings for homes fewer, and 
the travesties of roads more horrible. Certain letters written for the 
Palladium by early settlers, all of whom have passed away, are for- 
tunately available, and carry one hack to 1815 or earlier, and two 
pamphlets dealing with conditions during a few years following L823 
and IS-?! are invaluable Tor this purpose. They seem to awaken in the 
reader the genuine spirit of the time of which they treat, and quicken 
in him a sympathy with it. as they almost photograph the scenes to 
which they refer. Following are extracts from seme of the letters in 
question: 

By Dr. Sidney P. Bates: " Few horses were raised the first twenty- 
live years. Plowing and farm work could not he done by them. The 
stumps and roots which cumbered the ground forbade their use on the 
plow- and harrow. Oxen were in general use, and a nice large yoke 
would sell for fifty dollars; a good cow in the spring of the year for 
seventeen to twenty dollars, and to the drover in the fall at from twelve 
to fourteen dollars. Beef was not much eaten. Rev. Jedediah Burehard, 
the evangelist, held a meeting here in the summer of 1840, and in the 
arrangement made with him it was expressly stipulated that he was to 
be supplied daily with fresh beef. Accordingly it was brought daily 
from Plattsburgh by stage. The dairy gave no very encouraging pros- 
pect of wealth. Hotter sold from eight cents to twelve and a half cents 
a pound, governed generally by the season of the year/' And again: "I 
recollect a funeral procession coming down from two miles south of the 
village of a Sunday. It was made up of six lumber wagons contain- 
ing the mourners and some of the neighbors, a long cavalcade of gentle- 
men and ladies on horsehack (some of whom were riding double), and 
quite a procession of men. women, girls and boys on foot." 

By lion. Ashhel B. Parmelee: "At an early day we used to hear of 
an evening from our house adjoining the cemetery on Webster street 
the wolves howl in the western forest, and occasionally the scream of 
a panther. Game o\' all kinds was abundant. I have seen wild deer in 
the old cemetery." 

By former Vice-President William A. Wheeler: "I bought my first 
broadcloth coat at Fort Covington, or ' thereahouts." I may now safely 



TtSlde of 

our :.■ a mease, i 

- 
months was :' nlar 

of th^ - 

z&k flax. 

>.nd make 

*as alw* 
■ 

onrtward! man was 
t than v. 
of bleached v . th a pair 

_■ 
by aj. : TOth a little mol&sse- 

■ 
• 
pulpi* .: a monitor, hur 

lair into the 1 
with the fuse cut -r. 

..t an a: 
him eoneerni: . ! and k 

takir.. «, which 

.•mown at without a snrair. 

t local. read 

partial failure 
■ 

nual nv 
tress . their 

corn * Mature directed that t: 

-hat date. I from Mr. 

such crops as had in p« 1 destrt * 

red that 

Wead had a store wl hurch r. 

handlir. g 
sufficient quantity had aecumuhr would harl - - 



I)!' History of Franklin Count \ 

Covington for shipment to Montreal, and the teams would bring back mer- 
chandise for the store. In the fall of L816 supplies of all kinds had 

run low in Malone, until a state of famine prevailed. A boat had been 
long overdue at Fort Covington with flour, and in the expectation that 
it must have arrived and that Clark & Wead's teams, absent on a trip 
with potash, would surely return with a supply of food, the store had 
rilled with people to await them, each having his bag to be filled with 
flour. But the wagons came home empty. When the crowd learned 
that none could he had the disappointment, was great and bitter. 1 
saw strong, hardy men cry like children, sobbing that they could bear 
hunger themselves, but that it was hard to see their children starve. 
On another like occasion Colonel Holmes, a jocular character, marshaled 
the men who were waiting at the store, and paraded them through the 
street. There were fifty of them, ami each carried a bag that he had 
brought to have filled with flour. Finally a boat-load of flour arrived 
at Fort Covington, a part of it was brought to Malone, and the anxiety 
and suffering were relieved. The same year Mr. Moody went clear to 
Troy, purchased a quantity of flour there, and brought it here. I paid 
him sixteen dollars for one barrel of it. and was glad to get it even at 
that price." 

Lot Lincoln, a brother of Anslem, was farming in 1816, and had 
twenty acres sowed to wheat and ten acres planted to corn. He did not 
harvest a kernel of either, and his experience did not differ greatly from 
that of many others. However, Jonathan Lawrence's rye field in Moira 
escaped in some way. and he had a fairly good crop. It was told of him 
later that the next spring he was called upon widely for seed, and that 
as long as his supply held out no one went away empty handed whether 
he had money to pay or not. 

Quoting further from Mr. Lincoln: "Though our community was 
composed almost wholly of poor people — many of them young, and 
just married — a common spirit of helpfulness seemed to pervade all 
hearts. If one lost a cow. his neighbors contributed to help him to buy 
another. If one were sick, we watched with him and took care of him. 
If he were unable to put in his crops, his friends put them in for him. 
If a road needed repairing, a bee was made to do it, or a subscription 
was raised to have it done. I remember that when the road from the 
Brewster place to Norman Wilcox's farm was a continuous stretch of 
corduroy, in wretched condition, all of the foremost men of the town 
and village celebrated the Fourth of July by turning out and fixing it. 



Franklin I 

I can not help thinking that in those early times the pe more 

. oorly than now, and worked together more unselfishly for the 

Jn an i: lid to rne: " I 

and Plattsburgh, and my 
employers would give me only three dollars for err. round 

which required ti road. I had 

to pa] d thus would ha 

a quarter for my own loo. m. When my 

father came :'. did not ha e iollar 

in money with wh d the way. He came, ho 

with a Mr. Woodbury, who had fourteen dollars. There we: 
the party, and when we left Plattsburgh there - ..lings 

\ Mr. Woodbury and family went on ahead wit:. m and the 

money, and we followed on fool ,ta pen:. 

the pamphle*- 1 to was written by William 

Fall Paver, Mass., in 1882, and was ent." □ the Border - cty 

."' Mr. Bead came to Bombay from Xew Hampshire with an 
and aunt in 1823, 8. The 

purchased a farm, of wh; res had been sowed to winter 

- the previous fall, a half acre planted to corn, and a small patch 
to potatoes. Fort. ne hundred dolla. 

paid. The li g rnmodat: the place are thus described by 

.Mr. I; : The cabin was built of medium-sized . oe twenty- 

four feet long and eighteen width. There was only one room. 

The floor puncheons : that is, thick, short plank made 

splitting -:t-grained basswood logs, and hewing them a little, 

go that they would lie in r :i the floor sleepers. There w 

hearth or fire-place: only a place for each, and a backing of rude - 

gainst the logB at one end. At the foot of this, on the ground, 

the fire was built, and the - _ -.dually found its way up along this 

chimney — back and out of a hole in the ridge of the roof. There w 

window, only a place cut through the log wall on the side opposite the 

door. The floor overhead was of loose unplaned boards, and the roof 

- ,vered with rough boards, and the joints battened with wide heavy 

r.ailed down firm; and this roof was al a t in the most driv- 

g storms. There was no piazza or shed or inclo- r-yard, no oven, 

no well, no cistern, no cellar, no outbuildings of any kind. Within the 

fire-place an iron crane had been securely fastened into one of the 

2 



54 History of Franklin County 

jambs, and a half a dozen iron hooks, longer and shorter, were used 
with this to lower or elevate a kettle, according to the fire. As we had 
no oven until one was built the second year out-of-doors, all the baking 
was done in the baker, or on flat tin surfaces placed at an angle to the 
fire. In this latter way the famous johnnycake was baked. * * * 
The baker (or Dutch oven as generally called) was capacious — made 
of cast-iron, and with a movable cover that not only covered the whole 
oven part, but was turned up around the circular edge so as to prevent 
live coals from falling off. Into the baker Aunt Ann would place her 
batch of dough, making allowance for expansion, and, drawing out from 
the fire-place a lot of live burning coals, she would fix a bed on which 
the baker would be set. Then the cover would be put on, and piled two 
or three inches deep with coals, so that a severe heat would be enjoyed 
by the bread from above as well as from below. The coals on top or 
bottom could be renewed if necessary, and a right food baking secured 
with the requisite attention." The description gives a graphic picture 
of the accommodations and shelter of most of the then inhabitants, at 
least of those in the more remote localities, for Mr. Read' says that this 
cabin and its surroundings were " as good as any other settler enjoyed." 
But " a revolution was soon begun within the cabin. * * * A door 
was constructed and hung upon wooden hinges, with a wooden latch 
opened from without by a leather string. Then three window sash were 
bought and glass to be set, and a double window was fixed in the west 
side of the cabin — one to slide sideways upon the other instead of 
being raised, as with us. Another sash was fixed on the front side, and 
these, with the door, made our cabin light and airy. Next a common 
table with crossed legs was constructed for every-day use, and it was 
kept for that purpose some ten or more years. Then a fire-place was 
built by laying down a good solid hearth of flat stones, and on this a 
chimney was constructed. Two jambs were built up on either side 
some four or five feet apart, of stone carefully laid in mortar, an iron 
support was fixed at the right height to hold the front of the chimney, 
and the stone work carried up to the attic floor. From there the chim- 
ney was constructed to the ridge, and a couple of feet above, out of 
straight cedar sticks some two or three inches square, laid up in a square 
form, and plastered within and without with clay, so as to render it 
completely fireproof. And this chimney stood the wear some twenty 
years. Next a new floor was laid of white ash planks sawed in a mill, 
but unplaned. Consequently Aunt Ann had a jolly good job before her 



Franklin Cqjjnti 35 

to scrub this floor smooth, which she did faithfully, so that in four years, 
by her exercises on washing day, with a splint broom she rendered this 
rough floor as smooth and white as could be wished. * * * The 
cabin was built of rough logs, hewn only on the inside, but between the 
logs were numerous cracks, more or less wide, and nice openings for 
letting in the cold. To remedy this, straight cedar plugs or wedges — 
more or less triangular in shape, so as to have a sharp edge — were 
driven in between the logs on the inside of the house, and a large part 
of the difficulty removed. But to finish the improvement moss was 
gathered from the large old trees in the forest, and, by means of a 
sharpened wire-edged punch, driven into the cracks on the outside 
until they were completely chocked, and then clay mortar was plastered 
over that, rendering the walls of the cabin as secure against the frost as 
though they had been built of brick. * * * The capacious fire-place 
would hold an eighth of a cord of wood without crowding. * * * The 
blazing fire so illuminated the interior that no other light was required. 
Eeading, sewing, spinning, knitting or talking could all go on merrily 
around such a blaze, and the occupants of the cabin cared not whether it 
was cold or not outside." Mr. Read adds that the fire-place took fifty 
cords or more of wood a year to feed it, and tells of a similar fire-place 
in a neighbor's house in which he had seen a quarter of a cord of wood 
blazing at one time, the logs used being eight feet long. 

The other pamphlet to which reference has been made was written 
by Mary Ann Duane, eldest daughter of Major James Duane, and 
wife of Eev. R. T. S. Lowell, a brother of James Russell Lowell. In its 
way it is one of the most charming bits of literature that it has ever 
been my fortune to read ; but it is in larger part simply a recital of the 
home life of the family and an affectionate tribute to a mother of 
exceptional graces and superior womanhood, and much of it, therefore, 
so intimate and private that it would be an intrusion to reproduce it 
for the general public — it having been written to inform the youngest 
sister (who afterward become the wife of Rev. C. F. Robertson) of the 
life in the Duane household at a period earlier than the memory of 
Mrs. Robertson could reach. However, the book contains some gen- 
eral matter that it seems permissible to quote, and because it breathes 
so vitally the spirit of the times which it covers these extracts are here 
given : 

While building in Duane and opening a road there through ten 
miles of forest from Malone, Major Duane established his family for 



36 History of Franklin County 

three years in the Dr. Waterhouse dwelling (now occupied by S. C. 
Dudley) on Webster street, Malone. Mrs. Lowell thus describes the 
place as it was in 1824 : " We had a pasture, an orchard, a barn, a 
garden, a front yard full of plum trees, and a wood to pick flowers in. 
* * * Malone was a queer little backwoods village. The people 
were colonists from Vermont, so cut off from all communication with 
seaboard cities that their manners and standards were quite their own. 
There was but one carpet in the place ; that one Mrs. Willson had, made 
by her husband's first wife, a lady of extra elegance. [The lady referred 
to was Mrs. Abel Willson, whose husband was county clerk, and the 
grandfather of George Willson, superintendent of Malone's water- 
works.] It was made of some sort of thick white blanketing, with red 
and black snakes cut out and sewed on in a sort of scroll work. The 
people all lived with their help on terms of perfect equality. They were 
generally of the same stock, and had been brought up in very much 
the same way. When mother went to return the visit of the principal 
lady, the girl stood arranging her hair by the parlor mirror, addressing 
all sorts of visiting talk to her till the lady should come down; and 
this was for politeness — she would not leave her alone. * ; * * 
There was something very pleasant, I have heard mother say, in the 
way the villagers regarded going on the town. There was not yet 
a county poorhouse; the poor of each town were looked after by the 
overseers. It was not thought disgraceful to have lost one's means of 
living. A person was under obligations to nobody; it was only avail- 
ing one's self of a right which all had, and any one might be forced 
to accept. She spoke of one woman who had been somebody's help, 
and when taken sick had no wages laid up. Accordingly the over- 
seers of the poor paid her board at the house of one of the most 
respectable couples in the place. Everybody was expected to call on 
her and carry her some little present, a fancy night cap, shawl or the 
like. She was waited upon and petted, the center of quite a little 
sociability. * * * 

" The people up in ' Number Twelve ' without any bashfulness con- 
sidered our house in Malone as the ' putting-up place ' if they could 
get to the village, and hard work enough it was. The road could be 
traveled only in a sleigh or on horseback unless one walked ten miles 
from the town line ; and many lived back of that. * * * Either at 
the time of the hanging of Videto, which everybody went to see, or 
perhaps on an occasion when one of the Duane people was being tried 



Franklin County 37 

in county court, our house was filled to overflowing with guests from 
' Number Twelve.' Father was not at home, and old Deacon Ester- 
brooks sat at the foot of the table and 'helped.' He gave a portion to 
each of the numerous guests, then turned to mother and said, ' There 
is none left for you, Mrs. Duane.' * * * 

"As I remember Malone, it was the most perfect representation of 
the ideal puritanical village. Mr. Parmelee, the minister of the Con- 
gregational Church, had come there just at the close of the war of 1812. 
[He came before the war.] The place had been occupied the winter 
before by English soldiers, and had suffered the demoralization usual 
in such cases. He had gone to work on the place with a strong will 
and hard principles, and so carried things that it was the fashion to be 
a church member; no one was of any social account who was not. 
Xo amusements were tolerated but prayer meetings and singing 
schools. * * * 

" Nearly everybody in Malone was a Congregationalist. They used 
to have a church meeting on the Thursday before communion Sunday, 
where any member, young or old, could make a complaint against any 
other member who, he thought, had clone injury to the cause. * * * 
The people then kept the Sabbath from sundown on Saturday till sun- 
down on Sunday. One Sunday evening mother and father walked to 
look at a house, and after inspecting it they said they would take it. 
Dr. Waterhouse was the owner; the chance was too good to bring the 
ungodly habits of the first representatives of the Episcopal Church to 
light; and Dr. Waterhouse was disciplined for making a bargain 
on the Sabbath day with one who would not be expected to know any 
better. * * * 

" The taverns were wholesome, rustic little things made of logs, with 
a kitchen and parlor and bar-room; a bed-room for the mistress of the 
house, off the kitchen; a best bed-room off the parlor, not intended to 
be used; a garret-room up stairs, slightly partitioned — one end for 
women, one for men." 

One further illustration may be cited of the almost primitive condi- 
tions that existed at the date of the county's erection and for a few 
years subsequently. So few residents held their lands in fee that an 
act had to be passed by the Legislature in 1815, providing that those 
should be eligible as jurors who held land under contract and were 
worth one hundred and fifty dollars in personal property, or who had 
improved their lands in that amount. 



38 History of Franklin County 

The more important acts of the hoard of supervisors, which may be 
regarded as comprising the official history of the county, will be con- 
nectedly outlined in subsequent pages, while the incidents and events 
in the general development and affairs of the county that stand out 
largest will be given in separate chapters. The story of the war of 
1812 as that conflict touched us ; the particulars of the attempt in 
1817 to loot the federal treasury through the presentation of fraudu- 
lent or wholly fictitious war claims, backed by perjury; the actual rob- 
bery of non-resident land-owners in 1821, 1822 and 1823 by the pay- 
ment of enormous wolf bounties, many of them fraudulent because not 
earned; the effort in 1823 to secure the building of a canal from 
Ogdensburg to Lake Champlain, and the struggle through more than 
half a generation, from 1829 to 1850, for railroad facilities; the political 
history of the county; the Fenian movements in 1866 and 1870; bio- 
graphical sketches; and other matters each receiving separate treat- 
ment, or being comprehended in the several town sketches, it is essen- 
tial here to outline only the story of general growth and progress which 
the collective enterprise and individual efforts of our fathers wrought. 

Until after 1820 the inhabitants were practically one in race, in 
religious faith, and in political and economic views, though of course 
this does not mean that there was no foreign element, but that it was 
insignificant in numbers, comprising only five and a half per cent, of 
the population in 1820 ; nor that all were adherents of a single religious 
denomination, or that in politics all were members of the same party ; 
but only that the people were really united on fundamentals — one in 
spirit and purpose, making unity of action easier, and conducing to 
a prevalence of greater equality, of a closer neighborliness, and to more 
uniform standards of conduct. Individual material conditions were 
much more nearly equal than they have since come to be. While 
all were poor, they were thrifty spirited and progressive, and content 
to live frugally and humbly. Of actual paupers in 1825 there were 
only eight in the entire county, or one in every thousand of the people. 

Yet in the early years, because of insufficiency of capital, there could 
of course be no large development of general business or of manufac- 
tories other than those of the simplest character ; and with the excep- 
tion of tanneries, distilleries, a few primitive iron works (most of 
which were merely blacksmith shops), and grist and saw mills, the 
industries were wholly domestic and agricultural. And it is significant 
of the former habits of the people that even as late as 1855 there was 



Franklin County 39 

not one music, milk, fruit or ice dealer in the county, nor any plumber, 
undertaker or restaurant, and only one telegraph operator, one book- 
seller, three barbers, and (mirabile dictu!) barely three servants. The 
farm staples were rye, wheat, corn, oats, potatoes and flax, with neat 
cattle and sheep comprising most of the farm stock; and the domestic 
manufactures, apart from potash, were principally cloth — over sixty 
thousand yards of it in 1835, of which 20,623 yards were from flax, 
and 39,276 yards from wool. This production in families increased in 
1845 to 83,309 yards, with all of the work except some of the carding 
performed in homes. Horses in the county numbered only 1,261 in 
1825, or not much more than half as many as there are now automo- 
biles, neat cattle 7,499, and sheep 9,568. In 1845 the horses had 
increased to 3,878, the neat cattle to 20,069, and the sheep to 47,790. 
The contrast between these figures and those for 1910 is impressive. Of 
horses in 1910 the county had 9,260, a loss of 477 in ten years; of neat 
cattle 46,108, and of sheep only 5,223, a decrease of 15,674 from 1900. 
The last of the distilleries went out of existence about 1840, and only 
one tannery of any importance remains. 

Churches and schools were of early origin, but something like twenty 
years had to elapse from the organization of the first church before any 
society was strong enough to erect a church edifice. The first structure 
of this type in the county was either the old union church at Moira or 
that of the Congregationalists in Malone, the latter of which is known 
to have been built in 1827. The late Warren L. Manning was authority 
for the statement that the Moira church was the first, but he fixed no 
date for its erection. 

Schools 

Every town had its district schools as a matter of course almost from 
the day when there were children to attend, but the people felt that 
something better and broader should also be provided, and in 1806 the 
Harison Academy was founded in Malone as a private institution, and 
a few years later there was a like so-called academy at Fort Covington. 
In 1831 regents' charters for real academies at both places were 
obtained. Fort Covington's no longer exists as an academy, but 
continues as a high school with equivalent courses of study. No 
other academies were ever chartered in the county, but Saranac Lake, 
Tupper Lake, St. Eegis Falls, Chateaugay, Brushton and Moira have 
each a high school of creditable standing, which do academic work ; and 
also there are union schools at North Bangor, Bombay and Dickinson 



40 History of Franklin County 

Center which give academic instruction, though not in full course. 
The cause of education has never been neglected here, nor had to depend 
upon a stinted support. It will nevertheless not be questioned that 
there is abundant room for improvement in conditions and methods. 
The law of 1917, providing for the township instead of the old plan 
of district administration and support, while a well meant attempt to 
assure better facilities and to equalize tax burdens, was unpopular 
because burdensome in cost, and public sentiment compelled its repeal 
in 1918. But there will be no cessation of demand for adoption of 
some plan that will relieve the smaller and poorer districts from onerous 
expense, require dilapidated school houses to be abandoned or at least 
kept in decent repair, lead to the employment of better qualified teach- 
ers, and enable bright and ambitious pupils to pursue their studies 
more advantageously. A consolidation of all of the schools in a town 
into two or three or four, with provision for transportation at public 
expense of the children from all parts of the enlarged district to a cen- 
tral school, is probably not now feasible, but it is practically sure to be 
brought about eventually, and with the accomplishment educational 
opportunities will be greater, and the work of the public schools become 
more beneficent. 

Newspapers 
Publication of the first newspaper in the county, the Franklin 
Telegraph, was begun in Malone in 1820, and of the second, the Frank- 
lin Republican, in Fort Covington in 1827. The story of these and of 
other newspapers in the county is told in the several town sketches. 

An Early Agricultural Society 

In 1820 an agricultural society was organized with Joseph Plumb 
of Bangor as president, Thomas Smith of Chateaugay and Asa Wheeler 
of Malone as vice-presidents, and John Wood of Malone as treasurer. 
While its premium list included but the smallest fraction of articles for 
which prizes are now provided, the enterprise as a whole had great 
merit, and might perhaps be profitably considered and in parts adopted 
by the management of our present popular and progressive society, 
especially with respect to the offering of prizes for best fields of crops 
and best farming generally. The amount distributed in premiums the 
first year was $106.50, wholly for animals, crops and a few manufac- 
tures. Of this total the State contributed $87, and in 1822 and again 
in 1823 the county gave $100. Committees were created to visit and 



Fp.axkl.ix County 41 

inspect the competing fields and farms. The premiums : were 

lor the "likeliest buF for second of 

each. Some of the items were: Bull. $10; >ke oxe: 

steers, three years old, $5 ; two years old, -34 ; one year old, S3 ; milch 
cow, S-i; pair swine, 34; breeding mare and c .'ring 

wheat. - winter whe ts, $4: $* ...dian 

corn, S3 ; half acre of flax and potal s, $4 each. In subsequent years 
the amounts of some of these prizes were reduced, and the number of 
articles and the total offerings enlarged. A premium list was put . 

I 526, but the Franklin a rt of any fair held 

that year or afterward, so that it is ...able th^~ then 

went out of existence. Of course there were no purses in any year for 
trials of speed, for probably there w-. in all this section, 

and certainly there was no race track. 

Other Eaely Exterpl 

Notwithstanding the collapse of the organization, probably in 1 - 
the movement was nevertheless typical of the spirit of enterprise and 
the striving for betterment that appears to have been all but unceasing 
on the part of the pioneers, who seemingly were animated by the con- 
viction that they must have the best of everything, and get it quickly. 
The Erie canal had been opened only four or five years when they sought 

. -truction of a waterway to unite the St. Lawrence and Lake Cham- 
plain, and the world'- first -~ am railroad had been in operation for 
onlv a short time, and the first in Xew York barely opened, when they 
began organizing for one here — an amazingly presumptuous effort 
considering that the country was almost all a wilderness and ver - 
settled. Of course the canal was never obtained, though the State did 
make a survey for it, as told in the sport ition Develop- 

ment; but the railroad came after tweni - of agitation — a much 

shorter period than that through which a later and richer generation 
strove to secure a competing line. 

The first woolen factory in the county was built about 1323, the 
second about 1834, and the third in —all at Fort Covington — 

and a fourth at Malone in 1>44. Fort Covington's woolen mills are all 
out of existence, while in Malone there are two, the entire product of 
both of which is manufactured at the mills into garments for men — 
affording employment to a couple of hundred hands, and together com- 
prising the town's most important industry. A cotton factory was 



42 History of Franklin County 

erected and equipped at Malone in 1829, and operated until 1846, when 
ii was burned. The first o\' the mills for making starch from potatoes 
was Unit in 1S1I or 1845, and a quarter of a century Later the industry 
had attained to large proportions, and was still growing. There wore 
at one time forty such factories, and all prospered until the introduction 
o( com starch in immense quantities compelled them to close. The 
shipping demand tor potatoes thirty or Eorty years ago was not what 
it has since become, ami shippers would accepl only Limited quantities 
o( carefully assorted stock. The starch factories wore, therefore, the 
only market in districts remote Erom a railroad lor small potatoes and 
culls, and tor crops in excess of shippers' requirements. 'The industry 
was thus o( great benefit to the farmers for a Long time, hut it dwindled 
after 1892, and was wholly abandoned after L905. 

Changed Dairying Conditions 

The next important industry to he established was co-operative dairy- 
ing, the first creamery dating from 1869. In 1882 creameries had 
increased to twent\ or more, with seventeen o\' them reporting an annual 
aggregate production estimated to exceed half a million dollars in value. 
In 1894 there were forty-two creameries. The shipping oi' milk Erom 
this section to New York had not then been begun, and the county's out- 
put o\' butter must have been four million pounds or more annually. In 
1902 thirty-nine creameries in the county reported to the State depart- 
ment of agriculture that they had made in that year 3,618,716 pounds, 
ami approximately equal quantities were reported for 1903 and 1904, 
Bangor was the biggest producer with 711,395 pounds. Malone next 
with 543,294, Bombay third with 354,000, and Burke fourth with 
321,000. Chateaugay and Dickinson stood tilth and sixth respectively, 
each with an output of over 250,000 pounds. l*ut the competition by 
the condensaries and shippers in recent years has decreased deliveries 
of milk to the creameries, and compelled many of the latter to close. 
Two or three have been changed into cheese factories, and a few have 
become merely gathering or skimming stations for such creameries as 
continue to operate, hut the larger number have gone out of existence 
completely. Only a dozen or fifteen in all of the county are now run- 
ning. Time was when these creameries earned for their patrons only 
sixty to seventy cents per hundred pounds of milk, and when the return 
reached a dollar per hundred it seemed so good fortune as to he almost 
incredible. But during the later months of 1917 they paid to farmers 
a price nearly or quite fifty per cent, higher even for poor grades of 



rnilk that wa 
butter fat. Ship] . 

re wool 

daily 
rnilk trai. 

r the better | 
milk in December, 191' -■ 

univa- 
lent to i... iar butter. I 

patro] - 

with po: er pound an 

r head; ippre- 

ciablj rith the shippir. . 

of these latter -e when 

Chate-. a quarter 

of a million dollars 

Lb of mi flush o:' 

with the g product for thre In Burke 

I 
merit reafter 1 

that the children call "life . in the 

county are located at and 31 

at Xorth and one 

." n. 

.' the chai .. thus nol a the fact 

that, when at :erable quantities of 

to city mai 3 not ;alers 

have been dependent in large measure for their supplies upon St. Lav- 
as rem ■ 'klahoma and 
Nebraska. Do ire need t r thai 

Just he. twithstanding the farmers 

Becnre merit a :'■ . a law prohibiting 

supported by taxation from - any sub- 

stitute for butter other than a dairy product (whi - -imated to 
entail an additional I i a million dollars a year for mai. 
the farmer . rally buying and using - 

in their own hon. 



44 History of Franklin County 

The Hop Industry. 

Ashbel B. Parmelee has told us that Rev. Stephen Paddock, Samuel 
Hyde and Isaac Parker were the first to raise hops in commercial quan- 
tities here, but without designating a date. It would be presumptuous 

to question the accuracy of any statement made by Mr. Parmelee 
applicable to Malone. but 1 am disposed to think that Alexander 
Walker of Westville was an earlier grower than any of the three named. 
Mr. Walker's first crop, raised in 1825, was 1,200 pounds, and he sold 
it in Montreal at fifty cents a pound. With these and possibly a few 
other exceptions, hop farming, at least on a large scale, began in the 
county about 1850. Silas A. Ferguson came here in that year, from 

- _ county, and was probably the first grower with considerable 
yards, and. as I recall statements by him. contracted his crops for sev- 
eral years at a shilling per pound, though his son. John J. Ferguson, 
thinks that the price was considerably less than that. Andrew W. Fer- 

son, who had the largest yards in the county at one time, entered the 
field later. In 1S64 mould and vermin destroyed the crop utterly, and 
in 1SS6 many yards were so struck by blight and mould that not a box 

- set in them. In still other years there have been similar visitations 
and damage, but not to so great an extent. Xo other crop is so widely 
and violently fluctuating in price, of which truth the best illustration 
is the record of 1SS - -?. when there were sales at as high as $1.20 per 
pound, while hardly more than a year later the same hops were a drug 
at rive cents. The occasion for the wildest and highest market ever 
known was the destruction by blight of the larger part of the English 
crop, which created a strong demand for American hops for export. 
Franklin county's crop in that year was estimated at about 9.000 bales, 
and the market opened in September with offers of fifty cents per 
pound freely made : from that figure prices advanced by leaps and 
bounds until in December they reached $1.20, though my under- 
-" r.ding is that a dollar, or perhaps a few cents over, was the outside 

' r by any regular dealer. Growers sold in many instances all the 
wav from perhaps sixty cents up to a dollar, but other growers and out- 
siders generally came to believe that the limit would be whatever a 
holder of the commodity might choose to ask. and a fever of specula- 
tion, always a curse in the business, seized upon growers, merchants, 
phvsicians and attorneys alike, who bought at or near the top for fur- 
ther advance. The market held strong through January, but fell off 
ten cents per pound or more in February. Growers and speculators 



Franklin County 45 

believed this break to have been brought about through a use of substi- 
tutes, while experienced dealers and the brewers, denying such prac- 
tices, declared that the excessive cost of hops had compelled brewing 
economies and adoption of new methods. It is certainly true that dollar 
hops led to the discovery that half the quantity per barrel of beer that 
had formerly been employed would serve all requirements ; and, besides 
this leverage for breaking the market,- forced importations from 
Europe had effect in the same direction. In any case, prices continued 
to sag month by month in 1883 until June, when they tumbled to half 
a dollar, and thereafter continued to decline until in September they 
stood at only twenty cents for the new crop. By the end of the year 
tbe quotation for old hops of inferior quality was about five cents. The 
growers who had held their crops and the outside speculators suffered 
serious losses, and some of them were ruined. The business never 
recovered from the blow. In 1887 the county produced its record 
crop — estimated, with probable accuracy, at over 17,000 bales. Since 
that year there has been an almost continuous decrease both in the 
number and extent of the yards, and of course in the quantity of hops 
harvested. Formerly yards of twenty to thirty acres each were common in 
Bangor, Constable and Malone, and many were a good deal larger. Bob- 
ert Schroeder, a Xew York city hop merchant, set out yards in Duane 
of two or three hundred acres, and Jones & Lester, of Bichmond Hill, 
Long Island, buying the Andrew Ferguson yards, and adding to them, 
became the largest producers in the county. It used to be reckoned that, 
including interest on investment, depreciation of poles and kilns, labor 
charges, sacking, etc., the cost of hops to the grower was about a shilling 
a pound. More often than not there was a time in every year when the 
offered price was high enough to pay a good profit, but it was by no 
means unusual for growers to refuse to sell until the price had fallen 
to below cost. In a number of years quotations were forty to fifty 
cents or more a pound, and in others as low as three or four cents. 
Thus growers were almost continually in a fever of optimistic expecta- 
tion or in the deeps of anxiety and gloom. Every now and then a 
farmer who might have placed himself on " easy street " by selling his 
crop when offered a good price would be wiped out for debt, while, on 
the other hand, a number would clean up enough on a single crop to 
pay the entire cost of their farms. The business was demoralizing at 
the best, for it induced extravagant purchases and habits of living. 
with expensive trading on credit: robbed parts of a farm to provide 



46 History of Franklin County 

fertilizer for the acreage in hops ; and caused neglect of other lines of 
agriculture, which, if less remunerative in some years, were yet surer 
bases for success and prosperity. The quantity of hops now grown in 
the county is probably about a thousand bales a year, and in 1917 sales 
were made at eighty cents per pound or better. Owing to the fact that 
there were so many small yards which the neglect or lack of means of 
the owners made almost barren, the Franklin county yield per acre has 
averaged only about two-thirds of that realized in Otsego and Madison 
counties ; and yet there have been a number of years in each of which 
the crop here put half a million dollars or more into the pockets of 
farmers. 

Crops to which the County is Especially Adapted 
Other principal farm products in the county are potatoes, hay, vege- 
tables and oats, with of course some rye, wheat, corn and berries. But 
soil and climate are specially adapted only to the four first named, and 
men qualified to judge who have made a study of the problem are con- 
vinced that cultivation of these, together with dairying, should engage 
chiefly the attention of our farmers. Potatoes and oats in particular 
are adaptable to the locality, the county ranking twenty-third in the 
State in potato acreage and tenth in total production, while in yield 
per acre it stands at the head, with 197 bushels. Gratifying as this 
third condition is, the results of prize contests suggest that with wise 
selection and treatment of seed, proper fertilizing and improved meth- 
ods of care and cultivation it is altogether practicable to better it. Each 
of four competitors secured a production in excess of 300 bushels per 
acre, and one of 373 bushels, or nearly twice the average, and equal at 
the high price in 1916-17 to $1,100 per acre. Surely, special effort 
that gives such results is amply compensatory, and the figures ought 
to stimulate every grower to increase his acreage yield. So far as can 
be judged, the prize winners had no particular advantage in regard to 
soil over the generality of farmers, and their successes would seem, 
therefore, to have been attained through more intelligent and more 
thorough methods and more intensive cultivation. Again, it has been 
demonstrated that Franklin county stock is very desirable for seed in 
southern sections, since it produces earlier, when prices are high, and 
is also more productive. Thus opportunity waits only for develop- 
ment to afford our farmers a yet better potato return than can be 
realized from sales of the product for food. 

As for oats, Franklin ranks about fifteenth among the State's coun- 
ties in aggregate production, and eighth in yield per acre, which aver- 



Fraxklin County 47 

ages better than 30 bushels. — the State's average being 2G bushels. 
Here also contests for prizes reveal strikingly larger possibilities, as 
one competitor in the comity harvested 57 bushels and another 72 
bushels per acre. 

Vegetables generally thrive under due and intelligent attention, and 
with the Adirondack hotels affording a convenient market the growing 
of them ought to be profitable. 

Though the county is supposed commonly not to comprehend advan- 
tages for corn production, nevertheless census data show that the average 
yield per acre in 1909 was 33 bushels, or only two bushels under the State 
average, and actually in excess of the Ohio average. In contests here for 
prizes production ran from 54 to 85 bushels per acre, and in similar 
competitions in Ohio, in which 2,000 boys and girls were the partici- 
pants, an average of 80 bushels was reached, with a record of 153 bush- 
els by one of them as against the State's average of 30 bushels. It is 
not presumed to advise more general attention by Franklin county 
farmers to corn, but it certainly is permissible to emphasize that not 
only in respect to this crop, but also all others, there ought to be earnest 
effort to increase the production per acre. The growth of corn for 
ensilage has increased largely within a few years, and I understand with 
great benefit to the dairy interests. 

Though it may be questioned if census data are quite accurate except 
in items of mere enumeration, still they probably approximate actual 
conditions and values, and it seems worth while to give here extracts 
from the census of 1910 as they relate to Franklin county: 

Number of farms 3.675 

Value of farms $8,088,515 

Value of all farm property 17, 751 , 227 

Value of domestic animals, poultry and bees 2, 748. 589 

Value of horses ' 1 , 137. 482 

Value of swine 112, 525 

Value of poultry 60. 443 

Value of all crops in 1 909 2. 964, 160 

Value of all cereal crops in 1909 544, 121 

Value of hay and forage crops in 1909 1, 320,419 

Value of vegetable crops in 1 909 591 , 627 

Value of fruit and nut crops in 1909 40,515 

Value of all other crops in 1909 467,478 

Value of poultry and eggs in 1909 199,882 

Value of oat crop in 1909 (756,302 bushels ) 373. 152 

Value of dairy products in 1909. including milk sold 1, 174,737 

Realized from sale of animals in 1909 • • 448. 823 

Realized from animals slaughtered in 1909 176. 565 

Production of potatoes in 1909, bushels 1,433.761 

Production of corn in 1909, bushels • - 144,646 

Production of hops in 1909, pounds 474,515 



48 History of Franklin County 

Production of strawberries in 1909, quarts 66, 283 

Production of raspberries and longberries in 1909, quarts 22,260 

Number or horses in 1910 9, 262 

Number of sheep in 1910 5, 223 

Number of neat cattle in 1910 46, 10S 

Number of dairy cows in 1910 28, 964 

Hokses and Other Stock 

If Franklin county has fewer high-class thoroughbred cattle, rela- 
tively or actually, than some others, there has been at least a remark- 
able improvement in dairy herds here during the past fifty or sixty 
years. Grades average incomparably better than formerly, and there 
is considerable thoroughbred stock of pronounced excellence. Cow 
testing associations have been formed within recent years, and are giving 
valuable service in weeding out animals that do not earn their keep. 
It ought to be superfluous to add that only along these lines can dairy- 
ing be brought to pay what ought to be expected and realized. All of 
the creameries and milk-shipping stations regulate their prices by 
butter-fat tests, and it is waste of labor and feed to keep animals that 
do not bring fair returns. The range in this regard is startlingly wide, 
one series of tests in 1917 having shown a difference of $113.44 in 
profit over feed between the ten best and the ten poorest cows in all the 
herds tested. Here and there a farmer assumes to scoff at the value of 
such tests, and insists upon proceeding in the old blind way, but in so 
doing he unquestionably loses money. 

The locality used to be famous for fine single and matched driving 
horses, of which the Morgans were for a long time the most numerous 
and the best, and then the Phil. Sheridan and the Hambletonian strains 
(the latter through Wilkemont) came to predominate. Buyers from 
New England and New York city were accustomed thirty and forty 
years ago to visit the county every summer, and sales of matched driv- 
ers, and now and then of a single fast roadster or one that gave indica- 
tion of probable track speed, were common at from $500 to $1,500 per 
pair, with single horses fetching proportionate and occasionally even 
larger amounts. Items were not infrequent in the local newspapers of 
the period in question to the effect that this or that dealer had shipped 
horses during the week from Malone or Chateaugay for which he had 
paid local owners five, six or seven thousand dollars. "Rut now matched 
drivers are to be found here hardly at all, nor is there demand for 
them — breeding having run during the last few years to heavy draff 
horses, but with every kind decreasing in numbers — doubtless because 



Franklin County 49 

automobiles have become so numerous. Reminiscences bearing upon 
some of the better known horses of old times, when a three-minute 
gait seemed almost as fast as 2.10 does now, are interesting. At one 
of the first fairs of the Franklin County Agricultural Society in the 
fifties a horse owned by Sidney W. Gillett trotted in 3.06, and a few 
years later a Black Hawk stallion, called Flying Cloud, winch was 
owned by Gardner A. Child, and one called Farmer Boy, owned by 
William Lowe, raced in about 2.50 at a fair, which was thought at the 
time to be wonderfully fast. Flying Cloud won. He was classed as an 
exceptionally fine animal, and left a good deal of superior stock, some 
of which developed speed. In 186-1 and 1865 Lady Franklin, owned 
by Hiram Bussell of Fort Covington, proved herself a great campaigner. 
Her best record was 2.31. Three or four years later A. R. Flanagan's 
Dutch Girl came to the front with a record of 2.28 or 2.30, and because 
she was so good a performer and so attractive in other respects Governor 
Sprague of Rhode Island paid $10,000 for her. Other horses owned 
locally, in the eighties, which could trot in 2.30 to 2.35, and were highly 
regarded, included James Law's Draco Chief, Samuel B. Skinner's 
White Cloud, Frank T. Ferguson's Frank, and Thomas W. Creed's 
Phil. Sheridan, Jr. 

Quiz was bred by H. D. & R. C. Thompson about 1892, and took a 
record of 2.32 as a two-year-old on a half-mile track, which was then con- 
sidered very fast for a colt of that age. She afterward gained a record of 
2.1934, and was sold to Colonel Kip of New York for $3,000, with 
$500 to be added on certain conditions. She was one of the hand- 
somest horses ever bred in Northern New York, won a blue ribbon in 
the roadster class at the New York Horse Show, and was sold by 
Colonel Kip to James Gordon Bennett, who took her to France, and I 
think raced her in Europe. Other well known horses in this period and 
later include R. C. Thompson's Paul Smith (2.18 1 / 4) and Jack Harding 
(2.III4) ; L. L. Sayles's L. L., who won several races in the grand circuit 
in good time; Fred O'Neil's Joe (2.19V4), who never failed to win but 
one race in his class; Aubreon, bred by H. D. Thompson, and owned 
by Julian D. Earle and Eugene E. Lowe; Fred Betters's Brescia 
(2.06%); H. D. Thompson's Brione (2.08%); and Howe Constantine 
(2.0714), owned by Walter J. Mallon. The last named is of fine 
conformation, and always a dependable performer. 

With ownership of automobiles increasing, and farm tractors coming 
into almost common use, what future is there for the horse? 



50 Histoky of Prankub Counts 

Striving fob Transportation Facilities 
From aboul L836 or L838 public interest was concentrated for a 
number of years on agitation and efforl to secure the construction of 
a railroad. Everything else was subordinate in the minds of the people. 
Public meetings, attended by thousands representing not simply our 
own county, bu1 Clinton and St. Lawrence, were held at Malone, and 
there were like meetings at Ogdensburg attended by many from Frank- 
lin county. Solicitation was energetic and earnesl I'm- subscriptions to 
the capital stork of the proposed company, an ad was almost won through 
the Legislature committing the state Itself to construction of the road. 

with operation also to ho by the State on a loll hasis. similar to the plan 

in effect on the canals, and finally, when at length a charter was 
obtained, to the enlistmenl of Now England capital for prosecuting the 
enterprise. With smvoss assured the tenseness o\' hopeful and expectant 
waiting was broken, a tooling o( inexpressible relief and gratification 
succeeded, and the actual opening o( the lino for traffic in L850 broughl 
groat rejoicing and the conviction that emancipation had come from 
the handicap o\' isolation that had so long fettered the section. Still, 
there remained a seven years' struggle to he waged for legislative 
authorization to bridge hake Champ] ain and to establish the railroad 
machine shops at Malone. The tight was a brave one all through, with 
complete success crowning it in the end. Other railroads have followed, 
and the particulars relative to them, as well as to those that were sought 
hut not gained, appear in the chapter on Transportation Development. 
'The improvement in road-hod. bridges, rails and equipment generally 
that time and larger traffic demands have brought are not more striking 
than some o( the administrative changes. From an old book o( rules o( 
the Ogdensburgh and Lake Champlain Railroad Company it is noted that 
conductors were permitted to pass without exacting fares from people 
o( manifest poverty ami disability; that all baggage in excess o( eighty 
pounds was chargeable, and that " no work will he permitted in any of 
the stations on Sunday, nor in any of the shops where it can possibly 
'no avoided. Persons in charge of the offices on the road will see that 
they are kept closed invariably on that day." Something of the spirit 
of the rule last quoted continued for a good many years, and as late as 
L885, when excursions wore run often to Lake Champlain or to the 
Thousand Islands, and when other lines were making a particular point 
.■ducting Sunday excursions, the management of this line declined 
absolutely to do husiness of that sort on Sunday. 



!•> 51 

Though the 

and the peoph 

affaii 

there need for any, 

entitling them - j remits 

of produce and . 
a merchai 

': for the 

home ■ • In 1844 S 

C. Wead ai 
Bank at Kaloi 
an institution for 
acting 

a bank or banker could de] 1 8ta1 

with the 81 rity f bills 

or notes that mighi and as 1 

tinned to be payal 

D the ot: ,uired withe fund 

rigina] investment, with whicl I 
commercial papei xtant 

showing the items of this bank's but that it ha time 

$85,100 in no* the the: _ 

eral conditions irj the locality, together with the 
g 1 I 

or at the best few of them and in small - Undo 

ad little resemblance to modern banking operatu 
after this private or individual enterprie (ray in 18.j0 to the 

Bank of Malone, "a really, truly" bai 

prior to the civil war when it- £20,000 

* The State bank eon!. - til 1864, when it 

: for the organization of a second national bank, a first H tution 

of that charad ^rlier. 

Since 1864 other national ban 

St. Regis Palls, Brushton, Chateau^ - ranac L _-ht in 

all — having a combined capital < '0. a combined surpl 

104, and gating $3,910,850. 

small private bank at For* ( \ . capitalized at $10,000, which 



52 History of Franklin County 

keeps its condition to itself, but whose resources are believed to be about 
$100,000. The banking resources of the county have thus multiplied 
nearly sixtyfold in seventy years, or from a beggarly hundred thousand 
dollars, employed almost exclusively for the benefit of three or four 
persons, to almost six million dollars, which, while still advantaging 
stockholders, is continually accommodating the entire business public, 
and contributing inestimably to the vitalizing of general business and 
to the fostering and development of prosperity. It is a marvelous 
record, and reflects perhaps more impressively than any other one item 
the growth in county well being and wealth. 

Gradual Progress 
There had been for a considerable number of years gradual improve- 
ment in the condition of the people generally, but with little change in 
their habits and manner of living until about the time of the civil war, 
though it is true that, having come to be somewhat better circumstanced 
financially, framed buildings had displaced most of the original log 
houses or huts; household conveniences and utilities, originally unob- 
tainable, had improved and multiplied; and the hardships and priva- 
tions endured earlier had been greatly mitigated. Puritanic strictness 
and intolerance abated slowly, and individuals became less amenable to 
the censorship of the clergy and to the harsh discipline of the churches 
in respect to business practices and participation in amusements. But 
the latter remained of the simplest, and caused no great encroachment 
upon one's time or purse. They consisted for the most part in after- 
noon gatherings of the women of a church's ladies' aid society for sewing 
and gossip, with the men appearing sometimes at a later hour for 
refreshments and perhaps a bit of a frolic to follow; lyceums or debat- 
ing societies, in the exercises of which business men as well as academic 
students participated; lectures, usually by resident clergymen or attor- 
neys ; vocal concerts or entertainments by musical bell ringers ; singing 
schools and the old-fashioned spelling matches; baseball (not the modern 
game), bowling, occasionally a dance, rarely a circus or minstrel show; 
and, of course, after 1851, the agricultural fair once a year. Still there 
was no attempt at ostentation or affectation of " style," for few families 
had servants, and fewer yet were of independent means. The thought 
of the people broadened, there was a more acute interest in public affairs, 
and local enterprises commanded more and more interest and atten- 
tion. Manufactories sprang up, transportation facilities were provided, 



Franklin County 53 

banking was instituted as previously shown, and progress generally was 
observable. 

Tin: Present Agricultural Society 
Upon a call signed by a hundred farmers and. others the Franklin 
County Agricultural Society was formed August 26, 1851, or just a 
quarter of a century after the death of the earlier similar organization. 
Sidney Lawrence of Moira was chosen president, Harry S. House of 
Malone, secretary, and Hiram H. Thompson of Malone, treasurer, with 
one vice-president from each town. The movement was too late in the 
season to make it practicable to hold a fair that year, and accordingly 
the first exhibition was given in October, 1852, on leased grounds, which 
were simply an open field on which grain had been raised, and the use 
of which William Andrus gave for five years without consideration 
other than that the premises be fenced and the stone removed. The 
work of improvement cost but little apart from $92.35 contributed by 
residents of Malone and also materials and labor donated. The exhibi- 
tion in 1852 continued through two days only, and, no race track having 
been laid out, of course there were no trials of speed. The offered list 
of premiums aggregated $467, but the amount actually paid was only 
$263, of which $44 was on crops. The receipts were $437.31 for admis- 
sions, $250 for membership fees, $50 from the State. The next year the 
offered premiums were $621, and increases continually made since then 
bring the total awards now to about $3,300. The earlier lists did not 
compare favorably even with those that had bee7i offered by the first 
society twenty-five years before, as the amounts were smaller in almost 
every class, having been generally for only one or two dollars each, 
though three dollars was offered for some kinds of horses, and crop 
premiums ranged from one dollar to five dollars each. Many awards 
were of diplomas only. The attendance at the second fair, during which 
the weather was unfavorable, was estimated at between five and six* 
thousand during the two days, and the receipts were $871.88. By 1853 
a race track a third of a mile in circumference had been built, and 
a trotting purse of twenty dollars was advertised, with special attrac- 
tions to consist of Indian foot-races and a game of lacrosse. The rail- 
road carried stock and other exhibits free at owners' risk, which con- 
cession was modified later to a charge for transportation one wav. 
Special attractions in 1854 were music and a competition between lady 
equestrians for prizes, with two trotting events as a part of the fair 
proper (the purses having been $'.'5 and $15 respectively), and two 
races to occur the day following the exhibition, but with emphasized 



54 History of Franklin County 

announcement that these were not to be deemed a part of the fair. The 
purses for these were $10 and $50 respectively; and all betting on the 
grounds was strictly prohibited. The offers of these purses, in so large ( ? ) 
amounts, were roundly denounced as unwarrantable extravagance, and 
some of the pulpits thundered anathema against the fairs as a whole as 
"sinful amusements," and in particular as filching money from the 
poor. For a number of years it was a serious struggle to maintain the 
organization, but the earnest men of the time showed courage and reso- 
lute purpose, and conquered success. The grounds originally were seven 
acres in extent, but were enlarged about 1856 to ten acres, and a con- 
tract entered into for their purchase for $1,000. They have been fur- 
ther enlarged from time to time until they now embrace about twenty- 
five acres. In 1862 the fair was omitted because of the war, but with 
that exception an exhibition has been held every year. There was no 
recognition, however, in numbering the exhibition of 1863 that none 
had been held in 1862, which error has continued ever since. The 
fairs, therefore, have been one less in number than the annual 
announcements of the society suggest. 

The fact deserves emphasizing that the plan of the organization 
neither contemplates nor permits any distribution whatever of receipts 
in excess of expenses to the benefit of any individual. The society is 
distinctively and exclusively a people's enterprise, and all of the profits 
earned must go to the erection of buildings and improvement of the 
grounds, or be applied to increasing the premiums for exhibits or to 
extending the list of attractions. Under the operation of this policy 
grounds valued at many thousands of dollars have been acquired, one 
of the best half-mile tracks in the State provided, and a grand-stand, 
cattle sheds, barns and exhibition halls have been erected which, with 
possibly one or two exceptions, serve all needs admirably, and would be 
a credit to a much richer organization. 

The premiums distributed annually for exhibits have mounted from 
paltry hundreds to between three and four thousand dollars, the purses 
offered for speed contests are now $10,500 annually, and the total 
receipts for the four days of the fair in 1917 were $28,352.82, while the 
initial attendance of 5,000 or 6,000 in two days has been multiplied — as 
many as 25,000 people having been on the grounds in a single day in some 
of the best years. Besides the benefits which the work of the society has 
accomplished in stimulating improvement in stock and better methods 
of farming, the exhibitions have grown to constitute something of an 
" old-home week," with former residents returning regularly even from 



Franklin County 55 

distant points, alike for enjoyment of the show and for the pleasure of 
greeting old-time friends. Men from far-away places who are strangers 
to the locality also attend year after year simply because our fairs are 
so attractive and the welcome of the people so cordial; and not a few 
of these make no reservation in pronouncing the Franklin county fairs 
to be unequaled in JSTew York except by the State fair. 

Other agricultural societies existed at one time at Fort Covington 
and Brushton, and later there was one at Chateaugay. But the county 
is not large enough for more than one prosperous organization, and the 
other societies had but a brief life. 

Civil War Conditions 
There were great changes during the civil war. The conditions 
prevalent in that period are almost impossible of realization by the 
present generation, for the people stepped to measures not merely differ- 
ent from any they had ever before trod, but of cadences other than have 
since been known. Prices skyrocketed, but without the average touching 
present levels, and, though self-denial and pinching were practiced in 
many families, extravagance seized upon many, with a prodigality of 
expenditure never before appproached, and speculative operations which 
would have amazed and shocked the staid leaders in business of an 
earlier age became common. As wealth was accumulated by the 
shrewder and more daring, these bettered their dress, many began the 
erection of showy and costly houses, and all except the poorer adopted 
more pretentious habits and living customs. Millions of men were 
called to arms, and, though of course there was a scarcity of many 
commodities, little was heard of impossibility of procuring labor, there 
was no governmental fixing of prices, nor did food have to be rationed 
as now notwithstanding nearly half of the country bad not been devel- 
oped or settled, so that our productive area was then comparatively 
small; but the making of war munitions and armaments was on no 
such stupendous scale as now, nor were we then obliged to feed starving 
people across the sea lest they perish. To-day we see only occasionally 
a uniformed man, whereas during the civil war recruiting was prose- 
cuted continuously for years with driving energy, and at times hun- 
dreds of soldiers were quartered here for weeks or months, an ines- 
capable reminder of war. Moreover, there was apprehension in 1864 
and 1865 that confederates might raid our villages from Canada, as 
upon one occasion they did invade St. Albans, Vt. Money was in 



56 History of Franklin County 

abundant circulation, though of a depreciated value, and there was no 
such restraint as obtains in the present upon the individual soldier with 
regard to habits and practices. The consequence was a reign of 
immorality and vice not paralleled for half a century previously, nor 
equaled since. Drinking, gambling, brawling and licentiousness were 
common. War meetings were of frequent occurrence', and appeals and 
inducements were constant for volunteers to save the Union and avert 
drafts. Bounties to encourage enlistments were voted lavishly by the 
county and by each of the separate towns until in some cases men 
received as much as a thousand dollars each, additional to their pay, for 
a few months' service, and the total local payments of this character, all 
met by taxation, aggregated a half million dollars. Franklin comprised 
with St. Lawrence one draft district, and Malone was headquarters for 
both counties for all drafts, with General S. C. F. Thorndike provost 
marshal. Medical examinations for all of the two counties were made 
here, where claims for exemptions were heard also and determined. The 
procedure made the town a busy place at times. None of the drafts 
except that ordered in 1863 netted any Franklin county men to the 
army, except as they incited men who feared being drawn to find sub- 
stitutes. Nevertheless a number were drawn to fill the quotas of four 
or five of the towns, but none of them could be held because they were 
physically disabled or had fled to Canada. In one of the towns only 
a single able-bodied man was left, and he was so recent a coiner that his 
name had not been listed. The 1863 draft conscripted about 75 men, 
some of whom were released upon payment of a money commutation of 
$300 each, but most of whom accepted service. Censorship of cor- 
respondence and news was unthought of, and accounts of army move- 
ments and battles were full and minute — thrilling the loyal when a 
victory was chronicled, and causing despondency and gloom if there 
were a defeat, while the fathers, mothers, wives and children of the men 
in service waited always in poignant anxiety for the lists of the missing, 
wounded and killed. And it shames me to write that in that stressful 
time all sentiment in our county was not patriotic and loyal, but that 
there was an element in comparison with which to-day's " slackers " and 
pacifists are eminently respectable. These persisted in villifving the 
President and the Union generals, exulted when there were Union 
reverses, and in a hundred ways sought to embarrass the government 
and impede its work. As the present is a war of cold but resolute pur- 
pose, that was a conflict in which the accumulated differences and 



Fraxklix County 57 

resentments developed through a generation of contention on moral 
issues found vent in action, with hot, fierce passion so swaying the 
people that business proscription, social ostracism and personal enmities, 
if not actual physical collisions, were engendered between neighbors who 
otherwise would have been associates and friends. This bitterness was 
intense, almost venomous in some cases; but for those who would 
neither volunteer nor hold themselves subject to the drafts, sneaking 
into Canada while the war continued, there was utter contempt. When 
the surrender had been made at Appomattox, and those who had worn 
the blue came marching home, too man} r with empty sleeves or with 
amputated legs, or with health permanently broken by hardship in 
camp and field or in the Confederate hells that were called prisons, then 
the men who had helped to save the Union were welcomed with glad 
acclaim and reverent honor. 

Patriotic activities by civilians during the civil war bear no com- 
parison with those now observable. True, the women worked devotedly 
to prepare sanitary supplies and delicacies for the soldier sick; indi- 
viduals in many districts contributed Thanksgiving and Christmas 
remembrances to be forwarded to the men at the front; there was gen- 
eral and earnest importuning of men to enlist; and the towns and the 
county offers of bounties for volunteers were more than generous. But 
little of the activity and effort was systematized, and except that a fund, 
amounting to several thousand dollars, was pledged for the relief of 
needy families of soldiers, no war contributions of consequence were 
made by individuals, nor were government bonds bought to any extent. 
There were no calls by the Eed Cross, the Young a [en's Christian Asso- 
ciation, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army, or the Young 
"Women's Christian Association to enable these or similar organizations 
to render a benign service to the men in the field or on the battle line. 
And even though there had been, the response must have been slight, 
for most of the people had little money that they could spare. 

The record of the county in the present war will bear the most 
searching tests, and is highly creditable. Subscriptions running into 
the tens of thousands of dollars have been made for philanthropic work, 
especially for the Eed Cross; women and children by the hundreds are 
knitting and sewing assiduously on Eed Cross supplies; committees 
numbering scores of busy men and women have given of their time 
generously for a year to the various forms of organized war effort: and 
of the first and second Liberty loans the banks and individuals in the 



58 History or Franklin County 

county purchased bonds to the amount of a million and a third dollars, 
and of the third loan more than another million, or, say, two millions 
and a half in all — an amazing showing for a county that is small and 
not rich. Every subscription district in the county took largely in 
excess of its apportioned allotment, and one more than doubled it — 
the county as a whole oversubscribing its quota by fifty per cent. We 
have, besides, put into the army in a year a thousand men or more of 
an average intelligence and character that has never been surpassed in 
any war. Hundreds of these have been volunteers, and include young 
men who have taken courses in the training camps, and earned com- 
missions. In other words, Franklin county's contribution of men to the 
army and navy in a single year has been nearly half the number that 
it enlisted in four years during the civil war. 

The County's Civil War Eecokd 
It is impossible to compile a complete list and the individual records 
of the men from Franklin county who served in the army during the 
civil war, or even to ascertain their number accurately. As complete a 
list for New York as it has been found possible to assemble has been 
prepared by regiments and published by the State adjutant-general, but 
it does not show residences. It totals about 325,000, whereas General 
Phisterer, formerly adjutant-general, declared the opinion some years 
ago that the actual number exceeded 400,000, adding that it was 
" impossible to obtain any accurate figures of the number of men fur- 
nished during the war by each county, town and village." It was 
attempted in 1865 to have the census of that year include the names of 
all volunteers and of all drafted men who accepted service, but the 
total so obtained was only 139,481, or about one-third of what General 
Phisterer believed to have been the actual number. From the best 
information that I have been able to gather I am satisfied that, includ- 
ing re-enlistments, Franklin county had in the service, from first to 
last, well over 2,000 men. If the same proportion between the census 
figures and the adjutant-general's list for the entire State obtained for 
Franklin county, then the number would be about 3,160, or if we take 
the estimate of 400,000 and supply the resultant percentage it would 
be about 3,860 ; but both of these latter totals seem improbable. The 
town clerks' were required in 1866 to prepare complete lists of those 
who had served in the army from their respective towns, and I have 
counted as many of these lists for Franklin county as I have been able 
to locate. The number shown bv the census returns of 1865 and also 



Franklin County 59 

by the obtainable town clerks' reports in 1866 appear in the following 
table : 

Census Town Clerks' 

Towns Figures Reports 

Bangor 80' 89* 

Bellmont 82 ] 65 

Bombay 48 48* 

Brandon 04 69 

Brighton 9 18 

Burke 65 158 

Chateaugay 82 82* 

Constable 77 ] 02 

Dickinson 124 204 

Duane 32 37 

Fort Covington 80 80* 

Franklin 90 123 

Harrietstown 17 30 

Malone 316 410 

Moira 64 97 

Westville 110 110* 

Totals 1,349 1 .822 

The draft ages during the civil war were between twenty and forty- 
five years, with the volunteer ages between eighteen and forty-five years; 
and yet there were hundreds of mere boys, not yet fifteen, and of men 
well over fifty (some of them from Franklin county) who entered the 
ranks — the former bearing the strain and hardships better than the 
latter, nearly all of whom had to be discharged for disability after a 
few weeks or months in the field. 

The county's organized contingents included one company- each in 
the 16th and 60th, seven in the 98th, two in the 106th and three in the 
142d, and it had besides scattering representation in a considerable 
number of other commands, particularly in the 96th, 118th, the 14th 
Heavy Artillery and some cavalry units, including the company of 
Captain Davis, organized in 1864, largely from Franklin county, for 
frontier defense. 

The regiments in which there were units of Franklin county men all 
saw strenuous service and hard fighting. Their records were fine, and 
their battle losses, in proportion to their total strengtb, were appalling. 
For illustration, the killed and wounded in all of the Xew York regi- 
ments comprised 18.4 per cent, of their strength, while the percentage 
for the 16th was 36.96, nearly all of which was suffered in four engage- 
ments. The losses of this regiment were the greatest of any of the 

* The town clerks' reports for Bangor, Bombay, Chateaugay. Fort Covington 
and Westville not having been located, the census figures are used. If the missing 
reports could be consulted, probably they would bring the aggregate up to about 
2,000; and in a number of the towns these reports do not include re-enlistments, 
which would further swell the count. 



60 Histoey of Franklin County 

State's thirty-eight two-year regiments with a single exception. Over 
fifty per cent, of the men in it who were taken to the firing line were 

killed or wounded. The following data are from a compilation made 
by the adjutant-general: 

16th 60th 98th 106th 142d 
Reg. Reg. Reg. Reg. Reg- 
Killed in action 91 39 63 85 70 

Died of wounds received in action 38 28 39 51 61 

Wounded, but survived 332 191 277 324 340 

Reported missing 19 18 72 214 23 

Aggregate losses 480 276 451 674 494 

Approximate length of service, years. . 2 3% SY2 2% 2% 

Died of disease and other causes 84 101 136 167 162 

Number of battles and skirmishes.... 18 29 22 34 21 

From the adjutant-general's records I have gleaned the names and 
data of Franklin county men who were commissioned officers in the 
16th, 60th, 98th, 106th and 142d regiments. The rank first following 
each officer's name is that in which he was mustered, and the ranks fol- 
lowing are those that he successively held. In many cases the records 
note discharges as terminating service, hut as this word is susceptible 
of two constructions I have substituted " resigned." Where no date of 
retirement is stated it is to be understood that the officer was mustered 
out at the expiration of his term of service: 

SIXTEENTH REGIMENT. 
Colonel. 
Joel J. Seaver, captain, major, lieut.-col. ; colonel Sept. 28, 1862. 

Captain. 

Charles M. Hilliker, sergt., 1st sergt., 2d lieut. ; captain Dec. 6, 1862. 
Charles H. Bentley, 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain Jan. 21, 1863; wounded; re- 
enlisted; captain in Vermont cavalry. 

First Lieutenant. 
Frederic F. Wead, 1st lieut.; transferred to 98th regiment, which see. 
Samuel W. Gleason, private; 1st lieut. Aug. 9, 1862. 

Second Lieutenant. 

Milton E. Roberts, 2d lieut.; resigned Nov. 19. 1861. 
Enos Hinman, 1st sergt.; 2d lieut. Dec. 6, 1862. 

Charles A. Brown, private, sergt.; 2d lieut. Sept. 13, 1S62; detailed to be in 
charge of printing office at G-en. McClellan's headquarters. 

Chaplain. 
Andrew M. Millar, chaplain; resigned Sept. 26, 1862. 



Franklin County 61 

Medal of Honou. 

John H. Moffitt was given a medal of honor for great bravery at the battle of 
Gaines's Mill. Mr. Moffitt enlisted in Clinton county, but was a resident of 
Franklin for a number of years after the war, and represented this district in 
Congress. 

SIXTIETH REGIMENT. 
Captain. 
William H. Hvde, captain; resigned Jan. 31, 1863. 
P. Shelley Sinclair, 1st lieut. ; captain Jan. 29', 1863. 
Alfred N. Skiff, sergt., 1st sergt., lieut.; captain July 9, 1865. 

First Lieutenant. 

Myron D. Stanley, 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. Jan. 29, 1863; died of wounds. 
Rufus R. Stancliff, private, corp., sergt., 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. June 23, 1865. 
George G. Cornish, private, hospital steward; 1st lieut. Feb. 21, 1863; dis. for 
disability April 27, 1865. 

Second Lieutenant. 
Hosea C. Reynolds, 2d lieut.; died Oct. 26, 1862. 
Edward Sinclair, private; 2d lieut. Nov. 4, 1863. 
Gardiner Smith, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. July 9, 1865. 

NINETY-EIGHTH REGIMENT. 
Colonel. 

Charles Durkee, lieut. -col.; colonel July 4, 1862; resigned Feb. 25, 1863. 
Frederic F. Wead, lieut.-col. by transfer and promotion from 16th regiment; 
colonel Mar. 4, 1864; killed June 3, 1864. 

Major. 
Albon Man, major; resigned June 4, 1862. 

Adjutant. 
Edward H. Hobbs, adjutant; resigned June 2, 1863. 
Daniel H. Stanton, 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; adjutant June 2, 1863; wounded. 

Captain. 
Seymour L. Andrus, 1st lieut.; captain Oct. 31, 1862; resigned June 1, 1863. 
Samuel J. Austin, 1st lieut.; captain Oct. 1, 1862; resigned June 2, 1863. 
William H. Barney, 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain May 8, 1862. 
Fernando C. Beaman, private, sergt., 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain Dec. 2, 1864; 

wounded. 
Egbert M. Copps, private, sergt., 1st sergt., 1st lieut.; captain Dec. 1, 1864. 
Charles W. Crary, captain; ass't surg. Oct. 28, 1862; resigned Nov. 15, 1862; 

re-enlisted and commissioned captain in 114th regiment. 
Newton H. Davis, private, 1st sergt., 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain June 2, 1863; 

wounded; re-enlisted as captain of a frontier defense company of cavalry. 
Lucien D. Ellsworth, captain; resigned June 24, 1862. 

Hiram P. Gile, 1st sergt., 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain Mar. 4, 1864; wounded. 
Horace D. Hickok, private, com. sergt., 2d lieut., quartermaster; captain July 

20, 1864; resigned Dec. 6, 1864. 
Edmund J. Hildreth, 1st sergt., 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain June 2, 1863; 

resigned Nov. 15, 1864. 
Amos S. Kimball, 1st lieut.; captain and ass't quartermaster April 7, 1864; 

afterward became quartermaster-general in the regular army. 
Frederick Lewis, private, sergt., sergt.-major ; captain Nov. 8, 1862. 
Edward J. Mannix, captain; dis. for disability Oct. 1, 1862. 



62 History of Franklin County 

Orlando F. Miller, captain; resigned April 1, 1863. 
Theodore M. Morgan, commissioned captain, but not mustered. 
Dennis D. Mott, private, 2d lieut., 1st lieut. ; captain Nov. 27, 1864. 
Benjamin Russell, captain; dis. for disability Sept. 29, 1862. 

Sylvester S. Willard, 1st lieut.; captain Sept, 24, 1862; resigned June 2, 186.3. 
Parrit B. Wolff, captain; dis. for disability Nov. 9, 1862. 
John J. Wood, 1st lieut.; captain Sept. 30, 1862; resigned May 2, 1863. 
Lyman B. Sperry, private, corp., sergt., sergt.-major, 1st lieut.; captain April 
3, 1865. 

First Lieutenant. 

Gustine W. Adams, private, sergt., 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. April 3, 1865; wounded. 
Oscar P. Ames, private; 1st lieut. Mar. 4, 1864; wounded; resigned Sept. 17, 

1864. 
Henry D. Doty, private, 1st sergt., 2d lieut.; 1st lieut. May 8, 1862. 
William Johnson, private, corp., sergt,, 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. April 3, 1865. 
Patrick A. Mannix, sergt., 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. Dec. 3, 1864; wounded. 
Charles A. MacArthur, private, corp., sergt., 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. Dec. 2, 1864; 

wounded. 
Eleazer Mulholland, 1st lieut. 

Silenus Washburn, 1st lieut.; resigned Aug. 8, 1862. 
Henry R. Thompson, private, com.-sergt., 2d lieut.; 1st lieut. Nov. 26, 1864. 

Second Lieutenant. 
James D. Hardy, private, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. Aug. 3, 1865. 
John M. Haskell, private, sergt., 1st sergt.; 2d lieut. June 24, 1862; resigned 

April 16, 1863. 
Alvin C. Hitchcock, private; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865. 

Henry B. Holbrook, private, corp., sergt.-major; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865. ' 
Archie Hollenbeck, private, 1st sergt.; 2d lieut. April 30, 1862. 
Frank Myers, private, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865; wounded. 
Albert M. Phelps, private, sergt.; 2d lieut. Aug. 28, 1862; killed May 16, 1864. 
Charles A. Powell, 2d lieut.; died May 13, 1862. 

Alonzo A. Rhoades, private, corp., sergt., 1st sergt.; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865. 
Edward I. Rice, 2d lieut.; dis. for disability Jan. 3, 1863. 
David Storms, 2d lieut.; died April 30, 1862. 

Eusebe Lalime, private, sergt.; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865; wounded. 
Sidney W. Langdon, 2d lieut,; resigned April 30, 1862. 
George P. Lyman, 2d lieut.; died May 20, 1862. 
Jeremiah H. M. Davis, private, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. April 3, 1865; wounded. 

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH REGIMENT. 
Captain. 

Charles J. Rider, captain; resigned April 5, 1863. 
Patrick H. Shields, captain; resigned Mar. 7, 1863. 

Eugene Wilber, 1st lieut.; captain Mar. 16, 1863; dis. for disability Jan. 7, 
1865. 

Surgeon. 
Calvin Skinner, surgeon; resigned Dec. 31, 1863. 

Assistant Surgeon. 
Frederick H. Petit, ass't surgeon; died Dec. 25, 1864. 

First Lieutenant. 
James MacPherson, 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. Oct. 12, 1863. 

Second Lieutenant. 
Henry P. Fields, 2d lieut.; resigned Mar. 9, 1863. 
Charles II. Lang, sergt., sergt.-major; 2d lieut. Feb. 11, 1885. 



Franklin County 63 

one hundred forty-second regiment. 

LlEUTENANT-COLONKL. 

William A. Jones, captain, major; lieut.-col. Jan. 4, 1865. 

Captain. 

William D. Brennan, 1st lieut. ; captain July 25, 1863; wounded. 

Franklin F. Brown, 1st lieut.; captain July 25, 1863; resigned Mar. 22, 1864. 

Birney B. Keeler, 1st lieut., adjutant; captain April 8, 1864; served many years 

after the war on the staff of Gen. McDowell. 
Frederick C. King, private, com.-sergt., quartermaster sergt., 2d lieut.; captain 

Oct. 19, 1864. 
Alexander Lindsay, captain; resigned Feb. 11, 1863. 
Roderick D. Morehouse, 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain Feb. 17, 1865. 
Marvin Potter, captain. 
Horace Aldrich, 2d lieut., 1st lieut.; captain July 6, 1864. 

First Lieutenant. 

DeForest Sargent, private, corp., 1st sergt., 2d lieut; 1st lieut. Feb. 17, 1865. 

James K. Thompson, 1st sergt., 2d lieut.; 1st lieut. May 13, 1864; dis. for dis- 
ability Oct. 19, 1864. 

Horatio P. Wilson, sergt., 1st sergt.; 1st lieut. Oct. 24, 1863; dis. Oct. 31, 1864, 
account wounds received in action. 

Second Lieutenant. 

Hiram T. French, 1st sergt.; 2d lieut. Jan. 26, 1863; dis. for disability Mar. 25, 

1864. 
John H. Gott, private, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. Feb. 17, 1865; wounded. 
Henry H. Hogan, 2d lieut.; resigned Jan. 19, 1863. 
Henry A. Miller, corp., sergt.; 2d lieut. Feb. 17, 1865. 
George K. Pond, sergt.; 2d lieut. Feb. 11, 1863; resigned July 18, 1863. 
Solon Reynolds, 2d lieut.; dis. for disability Jan. 26, 1863. 
Horace Wood, 2d lieut.; died Jan. 17, 1863. 

A disturbing and demoralizing, if not actually dangerous, aftermath 
of war might naturally have been expected with the release from dis- 
cipline and restraint of great bodies of men who had experienced for 
years severe privation and become accustomed to an environment of 
excitement and violence. But here, as elsewhere, the survivors of the 
men who had been in the army were absorbed into the community so 
quietly as to be almost imperceptible, and, with few exceptions, resumed 
the habits and employments of civic life as though they had never been 
withdrawal from them. True, there was evidenced a spirit of unrest 
and inability on the part of many to accept conditions to which they 
had returned, but it found manifestation rarely except in decision to 
seek homes in a newer country, which was thought to offer larger 
opportunities; and the county then lost a considerable very desirable 
element through migration to the West. Nothing better illustrates the 
practicality, adaptability and respect for law and public order char- 
acteristic of the American people than the conduct of the veteran 
soldiers when peace left no further occasion for their employment in 
arms. 



64 History of Franklin County 

Life After the War 

Nevertheless the county was not long without exciting episodes and 
affairs — the first of which, as told in a separate chapter, was the 
Fenian movement upon Canada in 1866, followed by another of greater 
proportions four years later. Then, too, there was an eager interest, 
attended by no little rancor, in the political life of the period that died 
out long since; and business expanded and became speculative to a 
degree because of an inflated currency, but with depression and 
Stringency following in 1873 in measure unknown with the lamentable 
exception of 1893 — which latter was charged by Eepublicans to have 
been occasioned by tariff tinkering along free-trade lines, and attributed 
by Democrats to currency disturbances incident to excessive silver 
coinage. In neither period was Franklin county affected until months 
or years after the pinch had been severely felt in manufacturing centers, 
but when it did strike here it hit hard. Prices as given in local market 
reports in both periods were ruinously low — potatoes 35c. a bushel, 
butter 14c. to 21c. a pound, eggs 10c. to 16c. a dozen, and other products 
at corresponding figures. But employment having been impossible to 
obtain in many instances, and labor commanding only scant remunera- 
tion, the body of the people were unable to buy even at the low rates 
quoted. In the years following 1873 large numbers of farms were lost 
under foreclosure or sheriff's sales, and in the 1893 period business 
paralysis and stagnation were accompanied by enforced idleness of labor 
and by a reduction in the wage rate for common labor to ninety cents 
a day. 

But with all of our vicissitudes we were yet making progress in many 
directions. It will not be attempted to recite in detail the changes and 
gains of the half century from the close of the civil war, but only to 
sketch some of them in barest outline. 

Eepeated movements were instituted for new railroad construction, 
with eventual success beyond the wildest hopes of the people notwith- 
standing failure attended most of the particular projects first agitated. 
There were, of course, disappointments and protracted delays, but in 
the end more was realized in the lines constructed than could have come 
through those that failed of building. The navigation facilities that 
had formerly been enjoyed at Fort Covington and Hogansburgh were, 
however, lost in the same years because of the channels of the St. 
Regis and the Salmon having become clogged with silt. 

While the old training days of the so-called " floodwood " militia, 
which had been the principal holidays of the people, had gone forever, 



Franklin County 65 

we gained a uniformed and well armed company of the State national 
guard, with a sightly armory built for it by the State. 

The deaf-mute school of beneficent accomplishment for afflicted 
children, and with its hundred pupils and corps of teachers contributing 
importantly to local business interests, was founded in 1884, and the 
State provided fine buildings for it. 

Outside capital established an iron industry of large proportions at 
Chateaugay Lake, and operated it for nearly twenty years to the great 
temporary advantage and benefit of the locality, but, as we now see, 
with unfortunate consequences due to its great destruction of timber 
for burning into charcoal. The industry collapsed with the discovery 
of improved methods of manufacture, and the hamlet became almost a 
deserted village. 

Similarly the southwestern part of the county, almost an unbroken 
wilderness until thirty-odd years ago, was developed and exploited 
marvelously, with a consequence that three new towns were created, and 
a number of busy villages or hamlets born, which thrived while the 
timber lasted. The melancholy fate of a number of these, now all but 
deserted, and in some of them scarce a trace even of their existence 
remaining, should not be without its lesson of the need for conservation 
and reforestation. St. Eegis Falls and Tupper Lake alone survive as 
outgrowths of this movement, and are still measurably prosperous. 

We were yet to learn, however, that the wilderness had other and 
greater value than that which its merchantable timber gave. It was 
only after the civil war that the Adirondack hotels began to enlarge and 
multiply, and the scattering sportsmen who had occasionally visited 
the region became a throng. Still other years had to run before the 
region came to be appreciated as a vast sanatorium with healing prop- 
erties that have prolonged many lives, and also before millionaires were 
to find the wilderness attractive to the degree that they created vast 
private parks and built summer camps some of which cost a fortune each. 

The bearing of these conditions upon the growth and wealth of the 
county, and particularly upon its southern part, is incalculable. The 
hotel business alone is to be reckoned annually in the hundreds of 
thousands of dollars, some part of which radiates far — farmers and 
merchants all sharing in it, and many of the male residents of the 
immediate vicinity finding employment as builders, general help and 
guides at good wages, and with mental and moral benefit through 
association with the people whom they serve. 



66 History of Franklin County 

Private Parks and Forest Fires 
The private parks, though not altogether popular locally because they 
restrict somewhat the freedom of the woods that formerly obtained, are 
nevertheless of consequence and vastly beneficial, for they add to the 
county's taxable values, provide remunerative employment to many care- 
takers and servants, and afford protection of the utmost value against 
destructive forest fires. How much this single last named consideration 
may mean may be realized by recalling what has been suffered from 
such fires in the past. Three-quarters of a century ago large improved 
areas in a number of the northern towns were devastated by fires sweep- 
ing in upon them from the forests. Crops were destroyed, and buildings 
and their contents lost. Again, in the early seventies, many extensive 
Adirondack timber tracts were fire swept, and in 1903, following a 
severe and protracted April and May drouth, half a million acres of 
forest in the State were burned over. In 1908 and 1913 there were 
almost equally extensive ravages. Of course the only time that a 
forest fire can be fought to advantage is at its beginning, and private 
park employees are always alert to discover and stamp out such fires 
before they gain headway. In 1903 the public cost for fighting forest 
fires in Franklin county was $36,128.68, and many thousand dollars 
additional were expended by individuals and corporations in similar 
effort on their own lands. In the one town of Altamont alone three 
concerns thus paid out nearly $14,000, and one brought suit against the 
town for reimbursement in the sum of $6,000. Besides these costs, 
there was a large property loss, probably not less than $150,000. The 
actual expense paid by taxation (one-half by the towns and one-half by 
the State) for fighting these fires in Franklin county in 1903 was: 

Altamont $3,858.44 

Bellmont 2,088.98 

Brandon 1,524 . 14 

Brighton 2,944.58 

Dickinson 1,300.32 

Duane 3,807.64 

Franklin 5,121 .24 

Harrietstown 2,272 . 50 

Malone . 3,388.90 

Santa Clara 6,641 .00 

Waverly 3,200.94 

$36,128.68 



Franklin County 67 

The Adirondack^ as a Sanatorium and Park 
The health-giving properties of the forests and the invigorating air 
have induced the founding of numerous sanatoria, which are con- 
stantly filled. Their patients are in many cases accompanied by friends 
and relatives to lend them cheer and companionship and to promote 
their comfort, and many of these become permanent residents of the 
localities and establish fine homes. 

To some or perhaps a part of all of these conditions is due almost 
altogether the fact that the village of Saranac Lake, a hamlet which 
had continued in its rude state and had been without appreciable 
growth, and apparently without any promise of growth, for half a 
century following its first settlement, has become one of the most 
attractive, prosperous and progressive communities in the State, with a 
present population of five thousand or more. 

A generation ago, when agitation began for acquisition of large 
wilderness tracts by the State, with the purpose of making most of the 
region a vast public park, the proposition excited general apprehension 
and alarm locally, because it was believed that consummation of it 
must proscribe industrial operations, prevent the development of 
natural resources, and shut out hope for future growth. The writer 
may be pardoned a bit of retrospection and personal reference here. 
Sharing in the general view and irked by what the scheme appeared to 
entail of injury to the county, but with recognition that it was likely 
to be imposed in some form, he took an active part in the discussion, 
and undertook to have provisions incorporated in any plan that might 
be adopted which would protect the section in a measure. Out of this 
effort came the concession that any lands taken by the State should 
continue to be taxed exactly as if they were to remain in private owner- 
ship. The suggestion of this policy was scouted at first by the metro- 
politan press and by legislators generally as absurd — preposterous. 
But the argument as unfolded prevailed, that if the State were to per- 
sist in repressing our industrial opportunities and circumscribing our 
operations, chiefly for the benefit of city people, as was then supposed, 
it at least must not impose unbearable burdens upon the individual 
property untaken, and the wealthier sections of the commonwealth 
should pay for what they were clamoring for. The suggestion accord- 
ingly came to be accepted generally as based in justice, and was vitalized 
by statute. The concession must continue, or some of the towns suffer 
bankruptcy. And still we must now admit that the park plan was 



68 History or Franklin County 

wise, thai the evils it was thoughl bo comprehend have not boon suffered, 
and that there arc more money and larger benefits for our county in 
preservation o( the forests than could possibly be realized through their 
destruction for Lumber, charcoal and wood pulp. 

Property Valuations and Taxation 

The assessed valuation of the real property in the county, which 
totaled S4.iUS.41Ji in 1868, increased to $13,536,418 in 1917, a gain 
of $8,617,999 : and whereas the State board was accustomed a half a 
century ago. as well as a good many years later, to deduct from our own 
valuation something like half a million dollars in equalizing assessments 
as between the various counties, it added $9,174,906 in 1911, indicating 
that in its judgment Franklin has not kept pace with most other Locali- 
ties in advancing its rate of assessment from a small to a large or full 
percentage of the actual worth oi property. But notwithstanding this 
penalizing the county now pays only about one dollar in every $o3 - .? of 
the State tax. whereas in the old time it paid one dollar in every $500. 
State taxation at its worst, however, is only an inconsequential part of 
the public burden, and. therefore, the place to enforce economy and 
retrenchment is at home. For illustration, nearly seven-eighths of the 
county budget in 1917 was for county purposes, and only one-eighth to 
meet the State levy: and while the county's part of the State tax a 
half a century ago was but little more than it is at present the county's 
own expenses then were only $17,708.31, and those of the towns, not- 
withstanding war debts were being paid, were but $41,622. The cost 
of county government mounted to $198,661.95 in 1917 (eleven times 
as much as in 1868), and of the towns to over $200,000. Here we have 
a total of about $400,000 of distinctively county and town taxation in 
1917, and school district and village taxes must have aggregated as 
much more, so that about $2? in every $28 of our tax burdens are of 
our own imposition. It is thus obvious that tax reduction must be 
wrought through local retrenchment, if at all. 

"While the foregoing assessment figures suggest a gratifying increase 
in realty values, for personalty the comparison is almost as striking 
the other way. Formerly it stood at about three-quarters of a million 
dollars, and now is only about a third as much, notwithstanding it must 
be the fact that we are many times better circumstanced as to per- 
sonal possessions than we were a half a century ago. 



Frankj.i.v County 69 

Jn 1868 the county was in debt for war bounties to the amount of 
$67,369.82, and there was considerable town debt as well. In 1881 
every dollar of it had been paid; but such condition did not long con- 
tinue, as the erection of county buildings was undertaken and bonds 
issued to meet the cost. At present the county owes £191,000 for high- 
way construction, and the towns are in debt, principally for like pur- 
poses, to the amount of $92,400 besides their respective obligate 
the State for moneys advanced on account of the construction of State 
and county highways. The county's obligations on this account aggre- 
gate $39,550 as of this date, and those of the towns $14,064 But 
inasmuch as the obligations are not to be discharged until fifty years 
from the date of their inception, the county will then have paid, includ- 
ing interest, a total of $90,855, and the towns $42,190.50. Besides all 
this, the villages of Malone, Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake are in 
debt to an aggregate of about three-quarters of a million dollars. 

The Public Schools 

The public school development has been great. Though the number 
of school districts in the county remains substantially unchanged, in 
part because of consolidation of several into union free school districts, 
the school buildings have been bettered generally, and better qualified 
and a larger number of teachers are employed, the courses of study have 
been broadened, and the work is of a better grade. At the close of the 
civil war only two institutions wore giving ar-ademic instruction, and 
now the number is eleven. The public moneys apportioned to the 
county by the State in 1868 totaled $20,322.50, and in 1917 the amount 
was $o8,224.39. There has been, besides, a corresponding increase in 
the school appropriations locally. 

There are six incorporated villages in the county, viz. : Malone 
(1853), Chateaugay (1869), Fort Covington (1889), Saranac Lake 
(1892), Tupper Lake (1902), and North Bangor (1914). 

Otiikf: Changes in* Brikf 

Changes which need be only enumerated include the introduction of 
gas in Malone as an illuminant in 1871, and later as a fuel: of the 
electric light in the same place in 1886, and since then in almost every 
hamlet in the county; of the telephone in 1882, and now numbering 
more than two thousand subscribers in the county; of water-works in 



70 History of Franklin County 

a dozen communities; the erection of new county buildings; a large in- 
crease in the number of religious and fraternal societies, as well as the 
erection of a number of fine edifices for worship; the founding of the 
Farrar Home for Deserving Old Ladies, and of the Alice Hyde Memorial 
Hospital at Malone and of a general hospital at Saranac Lake. Nor 
should mention be omitted of the prevalence of markedly better excise 
conditions and of a stronger temperance sentiment. A half a century 
ago almost any one of even a half-way decent reputation could procure 
a license to sell spirituous liquors, and nearly every village and hamlet 
had its saloons or hotel bars, while in the few instances where towns 
ranged themselves in the prohibition column the traffic was nevertheless 
continued not uncommonly, and usually without aggressive action 
either by individuals or by public authorities looking to its suppression 
or to prosecution of offenders. At present there are but three license 
towns in the county, and a year or two hence, now that the women can 
vote, there are not likely to be any. Moreover, in the towns where no- 
license obtains sales are almost unknown, whereas in the old time 
no-license was often equivalent to " free rum."' Legitimate business is 
better because of the change, wives and children are more comfortable 
and happier, and men generally are leading more useful and cleaner 
lives. 

A word about the " movies " seems pertinent because they reflect so 
marked a change in the attitude of the people in tbe matter of amuse- 
ments. Every village and almost every hamlet has a place of enter- 
tainment of this type, and it is astonishing the patronage that they 
enjoy. In Malone alone the admissions amount probably to $500 or 
$600 a week, and elsewhere in proportionate sums, so that fifty thou- 
sand dollars a year is doubtless spent in the county for this one form 
of amusement. 

Systematic and comprehensive improvement of highways began about 
1907, and reconstruction of over a hundred and thirty miles of roads 
has been had since 1911 at exclusively county expense, with bonds 
issued to the amount of half a million dollars to pay for it. The 
undertaking was perhaps too ambitious in consideration of the county's 
wealth and resources, for maintenance is expensive, and if not given the 
improvements go to pieces quickly. About an equal mileage of State 
and county roads has also been built, the towns as such have invested 
heavily in like works, and the old ineffectual and wasteful practice of 
working out highway taxes has been discontinued altogether. 



Franklin County 71 



The Future 



What of the future? It is believed not to be without hope and 
promise, though conditions and our location, remote from manufactur- 
ing centers, can not be thought favorable to a very large growth or to 
a very great industrial development. Aside from the timber supply, 
our natural resources are few, and not likely to attract capital for the 
establishment of large manufactories. It would seem, therefore, that 
we have no warrant for expecting new industrial activities except as 
additional comparatively small plants may be created. But the 
sanatoria, the summer resort business, the factories that we already have 
and agricultural possibilities are resources of no mean consequence, and 
all are capable of further expansion — particularly agriculture. Study 
of scientific farming and intelligent and diligent application of its 
methods must be our principal reliance. Our fields have never as yet 
produced in the measure that they ought, nor have they been given 
over always to the classes of crops to which they are best adapted; 
neither have our dairy herds had the attention and selective care which 
alone can make them properly profitable, and sheep husbandry has been 
too much neglected latterly. 

The average cost of living here is lower than in most localities ; the 
habits of the people are frugal; labor agitation and disturbances are 
practically unknown ; the suppression of the sale of liquor makes for 
larger savings, for a better employment of the energies of men, for 
greater thrift, and for morality; and the climate lends itself to the 
development of strong and vigorous men. 

With proper fostering of the interests which we have, and especially 
if the best approved methods of cultivation of the soil be learned and 
applied by farmers generally, and painstaking and intelligent attention 
be given to farm stock — cows, swine, sheep and poultry — so that only 
animals that show a profit be allowed to live, the county ought to thrive 
and its people generally prosper. 



CHAPTER II 
FRANKLIN COUNTY OFFICIAL ACTS 

The official history of Franklin as a county begins, of course, with 
the county's erection in March, 1808, as told in preceding pages, and 
everything of an official character antedating that year is a part of the 
annals of Clinton county, or of the separate towns Chateaugay, Con- 
stable and Malone, originally called Harison. The record for 1808 is 
brevity itself, and includes no matter of consequence apart from the 
routine procedure of organizing the county government under the 
terms of the act of erection. 

Site Fixed for Court House 
In 1809 a petition to the Legislature represented that Noah Moody's 
dwelling house, on the rising ground a few rods west of the Main street 
bridge, in the center of the town [township?] of Malone (the township 
was originally called Malone, but the town, which included a number 
of other townships, was called Harison at that time) had been selected 
by the inhabitants of the county for the site of their court house and 
jail; that "in consequence of such selection the inhabitants of such 
town had bound themselves to contribute the sum of fifteen hundred 
dollars toward erecting such court house and gaol within two years;" 
and that since the act erecting the county had not definitely designated 
the site it was questionable whether payment on the bond could be 
enforced, it was prayed that the site be fixed by law. An act as sug- 
gested was accordingly passed, and in 1810 a supplementary act 
empowered the supervisors of the county to raise by tax the sum of 
$3,250 in three equal annual installments for building the proposed 
structure, besides five per cent, commission for the collector and one 
per cent, fees for the treasurer. The supervisors were also to appoint a 
committee to superintend the work, and the sum of $250 previously 
raised for strengthening a room in the academy for use as a jail, but 
never expended, was authorized to be applied, with the $3,250, in con- 
structing the new building. In 1811 a further act sanctioned an 
increase of $500 over the original amount allowed for construction, and 
provided that when the judges of the court of common pleas should 
deem the building to be so far completed as to be safe and convenient 

[72] 



Franklin County Official Acts 73 

for holding courts and securing prisoners, they direct the sheriff to 
give notice thereof by proclamation, and that thereafter " said court 
house and gaol shall be the court house and jail." 

The original journal of proceedings of the board of supervisors for 
the years 1808 to 1813, inclusive, lies on my desk, and it shows on this 
subject that Cone Andrus and John Mazuzan, of Malone, and James 
Ormsbee, of Chateaugay, were appointed a committee to superintend 
the work of building, and that they were paid at different times a total 
of $127.25, which included the expenses of one of them for six days 
spent on a trip to Plattsburgh and also six dollars paid for plans and 
for drawing a contract for erection of the building — which allowances 
were additional to the following sums voted for construction. In 1810, 
$1,084; in 1811, $1,333.33; and in 1812, $1,332,67, or a total of $3,750. 
In addition an allowance of seventy dollars was voted to the contractor 
for covering the cupola with tin instead of with shingles, and for pro- 
viding a " necessary." There was also a separate appropriation of 
sixty dollars for the repair of a door in the jail and for painting the 
seats in the court room. Thus, if the full fifteen hundred dollars from 
subscriptions was realized, the entire cost of the building, including 
the expenses and compensation of the building committee, but exclusive 
of other fees and commissions as well as of two dollars paid to one of 
the judges for examining as to the sufficiency of the jail, and three 
dollars "'blown in " for spitboxes, was $5,757.25. 

At the time of the appointment of the building committee they were 
instructed by the supervisors to take for a model the court house in the 
county of Clinton, " and build as near like that as in their opinion 
they think will best commode this county, having reference to the sums 
of money likely to come into their hands for the purpose, which will 
probably not exceed the sum of five thousand dollars, including all 
probable donations." The resolution proceeded further : " It is 
wished that they might complete the outside and paint it the ensuing 
year, and to accomplish this purpose they will please to collect all 
donations made by individuals, by subscription, bond or otherwise, as 
soon as possible. From these it is expected the committee will realize 
at least fifteen hundred dollars." 

The Court House Also a Jail and House or Worship 
The building was erected under contract by Noah Moody. Tt was 
originally hip-roofed, and contained a basement, a part of which served 
as a kitchen for the sheriff, and the other part consisted of two tiers of 



74 Hestoby or Fra2tkij>- Couxtt 

oeDe — iaxk, damp and dismal, without a particle of furniture except 

jiair in each celL Straw scattered on the floor had to serve for 

- rs confined therein. The sheriff and 

famil y made the r ^structure their home. The first floor was cut 

- — Iming-m h twi living rooms,, a halL and a debtors' 

and criminal prison. The latter had only a single grated window, and 

jr was made of blocks of wood 

togd t to ea .ape the prisoners 

r and undertook to burn off the dowels, with the resnlt 

bo the bnilding and had a decided fright. The jury 

pal floor were appropriated by the sheriff 

for i . - : jtl and the remainder 

r was 1 rt room proper At .' -.- :_e only public 

d for m£: : served also as a public 

im aim - sorts - - — for public worship for the 

- ::r lectures, concern, etc. 

hill in 1 • I : proposition from 

It bad . :ia much sharper grade, which 

fact, joined to its deep sand. :he opening of a highway up 

academy hill- - i common. _ ind by west-bound 

traffic . A road ri. ■ illy across the academy 

green. me the cot down, bo that 

Q up in the air, and becai 
- Nathaniel Evans. It 

i jail purr :. of a new jail in 

uilt, in 1883, was sold at 
■ 

'- ■ ■-'-■'- 

In these years the 
. accomplished 

jther m 1 and its real business 

- - 

EarW/n, EzriixiXU or 
Yeor Chnteaugag MoJUsne 

Nathaniel Blanc-hard 

■ 

James Ormsbee Albon Man Asa Wka 

iirman Albon Man 

Albos Man Jonathan Lawrence Harry S. House 



Li. 1811 

• — H I -r. .. - :•; : :_.- irl : : ill : -_i-;s ; :i:i :._! 
----- . . 

■i- - : : r -- - —r ;- : :•. ■.-."..: .^ F;: ;. .: Lf~. r„_ ;:; ; i_ii 
:i;Ti ."-ir-iTrS : : » ± ; :..:■-. - ..;.-.: * r« _:. 1- .- :. -. . .I .. :.;_ ;: 

&3S.SJ - iacludii-i: ■ lery of $£50 in each ton for 

- - rre in :1. >r iii - - " 

: -. ^ . Deducting the fcigkvaj 

moneys and the items for wolf bounties:, die tool rotm charges for 

- - - s. : - - - - 

valuation iugay t. - - — *;;> 

of H - , — - - - - - "pon 

: - - - - - 

■ " v ■ "- ' " - ' - _ - . 

"^ - - > :'.T ":r;. : _-> 

'■■ - ~ - - • . 

a the pares nation of die county voukl yield f 

or only about one-sixth of what «s raised in lv*lT. The amo. 
> S an one dollar per capita, while ir. 

Uais for each inhahitant. 

:hose early town charges discloses that cx*nm»- 

" - *OtTS - 

- - r> - elections a ikkttai km] a 

ars each In that period 

1 in tiu _ - - s in 

jjress in I the supea - - 

- 

- illustra- 
: ■ . : claims pres - - 

rges rs - _ . 

Froir. rliest times sr to - - Stan 

ins - - 

- gtl - 5 - ' 

shiiu: es, flour and i 

articles. ITs - spec-tors 



76 History of Franklin County 

and prescribing their duties provided that makers and shippers of any 
of the commodities specified should label the packages with their names 
and addresses; required inspectors to rate the quality of the goods, and 
stamp the same on the packages; and imposed penalties for sending the 
goods out of a district or out of the State without compliance with the 
provisions of the statutes concerning them. The theory of the pro- 
cedure was that the State's reputation as a producer should not be 
permitted to be injuriously affected through shipment abroad of 
inferior commodities or of commodities improperly packed. But 
nowhere in the index to general laws is there any reference to inspection 
or examination of woolen cloth, and neither the State historian nor 
State librarian had ever heard of such a service. But in running 
through the index to the laws of 1812 for another purpose I chanced 
upon the explanation. In that year an act was passed (but repealed 
three or four years later, and so never got into the general laws) that 
provided for the payment of premiums' of $100, $50 and $30 for the 
best, second best and third best specimens of woolen cloths made in 
mills of this State from wool grown in the State, and also for premiums 
of $10, $35 and $30 for specimens made in families. In each county 
the cloths were to be judged by the judges of the court of common 
pleas, and the samples approved by them were to be sent to Albany for 
final judgment for the State as a whole. The judges were to be paid 
two dollars each per day for their services in this capacity. The 
quantity of cloth examined by them does not appear, nor are there 
figures showing the county's product at that time. The census of 1825, 
however, shows a production for the county in 1824 of 8,941 yards not 
fulled and of 13,307 yards fulled. In the same year the county made 
26,162 yards of cotton and linen. 

The supervisors' records from which I am quoting contain these 
items also : 

County budget in 1809 (including $1,000 for bridges) $2, 276 05 

County budget in 1811 (including $260 for bridges and $1,333.33 for 

court house and gaol ) 2, 444 72 

County budget in 1812 (including $1,332.67 for court house and 

gaol ) 3, 286 02 

County budget in 1813 1, 699 97 

John Wood, in 1810, " for services done as sheriff " 35 50 

Building four pounds in Chateaugay 120 00 

Ebenezer Brownson, two days examining woolen cloth 4 00 

Joshua Nichols, two days examining woolen cloth 4 00 

Asa Wheeler, one day examining woolen cloth 2 00 

Gates Hoit, in 1811, for services as county clerk 12 00 

Clerk of the board of supervisors in 1811 11 50 

Appleton Foot, for room and candles for court, three terms 34 00 



Franklin County Official Acts 77 

Lemuel Chapman, finding room and candles for jury $2 00 

Gideon Collins, for money advanced for transporting arms from 

Plattsburgh 1 25 

Expenses for bringing arms from Plattsburgh in 1812 (paid by 23 

individuals ) 643 86 

Gates Hoit, for time and expenses in 1813 in transporting munitions 

of war from Plattsburgh to Franklin county and distributing 

same 36 00 

Lemuel Chapman, guarding arms in transit from Plattsburgh in 

1813 6 00 

Thomas Kennan, transporting arms and munitions from Platts- 
burgh, and distributing same in 1812 4 00 

Jonathan Lawrence, for transporting arms and munitions from 

Malone to Dickinson 4 00 

Reuben Kelsey, undersheriff in 1813, for board of prisoner three 

weeks and five days 5 58 

Reuben Kelsey, undersheriff, for board of Indian three weeks and 

two days • • . . 4 93 

Appleton Foot, for providing room and candles and fire-wood for 

three terms of court 45 00 

It seems also from these records that cash did not have to be had 
always when taxes were due, as a resolution adopted by the supervisors 
authorized the county treasurer to take notes from Albon Man and 
George F. Harison for taxes on the lands of Harison and Pierrepont, 
for whom Mr. Man and Mr. Harison were agents. 

If taxes were low in the years which these records cover, such con- 
dition did not continue in 1821, when the county budget jumped to 
$28,794.04 (due largely to the extravagant and doubtless corrupt 
allowance of bounties for wolves killed), which total was equivalent to 
a tax of over five and a half dollars for every man, woman and child in 
the county. 

Eecords Missing 

The original records of the proceedings of the board of supervisors 
from 1813 to 1833 can not be found, but from data obtained from 
other sources it would seem that, with few exceptions, transactions 
could not have been much more than of a routine character for a long 
period. In 1819, however, the Legislature having directed the super- 
visors to appoint commissioners to purchase a suitable site and to 
erect thereon a fireproof clerk's office at a cost of not to exceed one 
thousand dollars, the supervisors appointed Benjamin Clark, Cono 
Andrus and John L. Fuller as such commissioners, and authorized 
them to expend five hundred dollars for the work. The next year six 
hundred dollars was raised to cover the cost to date, and a year later 
two hundred and eighteen dollars additional was voted. A lot west of 
the court house, fronting ten rods on Main street and six rods on 



78 History of Franklin County 

Brewster street, was purchased for one hundred dollars, and a single 
story edifice of wood (scarcely "fireproof"?) was constructed, which 
stood until 1850. 

The Poor and Their Support 
The Legislature having passed an act in 1824 making the establish- 
ment of poor houses obligatory upon all of the larger counties and per- 
missive in the smaller, agitation was begun to have Franklin county 
take advantage of the provisions of the act, upon the representation 
that money would be saved and pauperism diminished, because those 
who would apply quietly to a town official for assistance would not 
seek admission to a public institution unless driven by actual distress 
to such course. The supervisors in 1826 appointed a committee to 
investigate, which submitted a very full and careful report in 1827, 
showing the cost of the then existing system to each town and to the 
county for each of the then preceding six years, and urging strongly 
that a poor house be built. The figures of cost as given in the report 
were: 

Year 

1821 

1822 

1823 

1824 

1825 

1826 



Cost to Towns 


Cost to County 


$503.78 


$63.17 


372.82 


74.54 


618.25 


185.03 


513.15 


170.95 


721.30 


257.23 


795.17 


1,103.08 


$3,524.47 


$1,854.00 



The county paupers were those who had no legal residence in a town, 
and were mostly foreigners. The census of 1825 listed only eight per- 
sons in the entire county as paupers. More than half of the whole 
county charges for support of paupers for the six years was for expendi- 
tures in the single town of Fort Covington, while of the town charges 
forty-four per cent, was borne by Malone alone. Figures gathered from 
the State as a whole, and analyzed by the secretary of State, were pub- 
lished to show that the average cost of keeping a pauper in a poor 
house was only twenty-four cents per week, and it was stated that, 
whereas it had formerly cost the city of Salem, Mass., from ten to 
twelve thousand dollars per year to maintain its poor, the cost had been 



Franklin County Official Acts 79 

reduced to sixty-four dollars per annum through the establishment of 
a poor house. 

But notwithstanding this showing (which possibly may have been 
thought to prove too much), and notwithstanding the strong argument 
made by the committee in favor of acquiring a farm and building a 
poor house, the board of supervisors practically ignored the matter 
until 1830, when superintendents of the poor were appointed and 
directed to rent a tenement and a small farm, and cause the per- 
manent paupers to be there maintained. The next year it was voted 
to buy a suitable place for a poor house, and the sum of two thousand 
dollars was appropriated for the purpose. The results predicted by the 
report of the committee in 1827, above noted, were not realized, how- 
ever, unless comparison be made with the year 1826 alone, as the 
appropriations ranged every year after 1830 until 1845 from fifteen 
hundred dollars to two thousand five hundred dollars. In 1845 the 
poor house was burned, and the supervisors provided for rebuilding, 
but without appropriating a dollar specifically to cover the cost — 
which must have been paid, perhaps, out of the insurance money, or 
perhaps from the county's contingent fund. At the same time the 
board voted to petition the Legislature to abolish the poor house system 
in this county. Precisely the motives that determined this latter action 
are not of record, but it is not difficult to conjecture what they may 
have been in part. Doubtless the question of cost was one, and also 
considerations of humane treatment of the poor may have been a 
factor. It will be seen in preceding pages how considerately the town 
poor had been cared for under the practice of placing them in good 
families, and in the Franklin Telegraph (Malone's first newspaper) 
appeared an advertisement in 1825 inviting bids for the support of 
Malone's poor for the ensuing year, but carrying the reservation that 
the lowest bid would not necessarily be accepted. In other words, the 
kind of care that the poor would be likely to receive, as well as the 
price, would enter into determination of the award. But by no means 
could a system adaptable in 1825 have been certain to work satisfactorily 
twenty years later, because at the earlier date practically all of the 
inhabitants were socially on the same plane, regardless of financial 
standing, and even most of those who were best to do were poor, and 
glad to be able to add a bit to their incomes in any honest way, while 
by 1845 a new class had come to constitute an appreciable percentage 
of the population, and some of these would not have been agreeable in 



80 History of Franklin County 

all households as virtually members of the family, as in 1825 it had 
been customary to treat them. Moreover, the material condition of the 
people had changed notably in these twenty years, and, though severe 
economy still had to be practiced generally, there was not, on the 
whole, the former necessity to seize upon opportunity, however 
unpleasant, for adding to one's earnings. Then, too, the poor house 
system had operated to invite the dumping of paupers by one locality 
upon another. Thus the Nortliern Spectator (Malone's second news- 
paper) reported in 1834 that there were sixty-three paupers in the 
poor house, most of whom were foreigners who had been thrust upon 
us from Canada or from neighboring counties. Eight paupers of this 
class were found one morning in the year stated to have been left in 
the horse-sheds attached to one of the taverns in Malone, having been 
brought the night before from another county and abandoned here. 

The Jail Condemned 
Prior to 1847 a grand jury had condemned the jail in a presentment 
to the court as unfit and unsanitary, and in that year the supervisors 
appointed a committee to investigate as to the advisability of building 
a new one, separate from the court house; and in 1849 the same body 
considered the proposition to locate court house, clerk's office and jail 
all on Arsenal Green, and took steps to ascertain the probable amount 
that could be obtained for these buildings and the grounds then and 
now occupied by them. The reports on these questions do not appear 
in the records, but the idea was of course impracticable, for the 
Arsenal Green was then of State ownership for military purposes only, 
and, in any case, were better preserved for a park than encroached 
upon for buildings. Nevertheless it is unfortunate that before so much 
money was invested the location was not changed, because the proximity 
of the court house to the railroad and to other noisy centers at times 
makes transaction of business therein almost impossible. In 1850 the 
supervisors voted to expend $500 in building a new clerk's office, and 
also to borrow $5,000 from the State, payable in ten years, to cover the 
cost of lowering the court house and of erecting a new jail. This jail 
was of stone on the site of the present clerk's office, and contained living 
apartments for the sheriff. It was built in 1852, and was demolished 
in 1892, when the present jail was erected. In 1851 the sum of $600 
was raised to pay for the new county clerk's office, which was a one- 
story stone building on the site of the present jail, and served the 



Franklin County Official Acts 81 

county's needs until 1892. The loan from the State was not paid until 
it was long past due, nor was even the interest on it kept up — the 
county having had to raise money in 1867 to pay seven years' interest. 

Fees and Salaries Increased 
Other than these matters, little or nothing of particular interest or 
significance appears in the records of the supervisors' proceedings down 
to 1860 or later. It is observable, however, that charges and com- 
pensation of county officials increased continuously for a number of 
years, but most of them only moderately. Whereas $35.50 had sufficed 
to cover the sheriff's bill against the county in 1810, that official's 
charges had become $291.53 in 1834, nearly doubled in the next fifteen 
years, and in 1854 were $1,686.99. Included in the last total was an 
item of $150 for the hanging of Bickford. Twenty-odd years later the 
price for a similar gruesome service (in the case of Joe Woods) was a 
hundred dollars more. After 1854 the bills of the sheriffs increased 
almost steadily for a quarter of a century, until four dollars per week 
each was allowed for the board of prisoners as against a dollar and a 
half in 1810, and fourteen shillings in 1847, and the sheriff's charges 
against the county became about four thousand dollars annually. In 
1847 thirty dollars was deemed ample for the purchase of fuel for the 
court house and jail, then in one building; but in 1885 the correspond- 
ing item was $400. In that year, too, the sheriff's bill bounded to 
$5,513.44, and from 1899 to 1903 his charges as allowed ranged from 
$6,577.27 to $7,452.88. So great an increase naturally suggested 
measures for keeping the figures down, and accordingly an act was pro- 
cured to be passed by the Legislature putting the office on a salaried 
basis, with the county to pay the cost of food, fuel, etc. The salary 
fixed for the sheriff was $1,200 and living expenses for himself and 
family, and for jailor, matron, cook, etc., $1,016 in the aggregate. 
For a time the office had been earning for the county from three to 
four thousand dollars a year for housing and boarding detained China- 
men until the courts should determine whether they were entitled to 
admission to this country, or must be deported. While this business 
continued the net jail cost decreased appreciably, but when it ceased, 
after a few years, the relief that had been expected from the change in 
system was far from realized. The sheriffs' reports give the cost of 
jail maintenance, including salaries, for each year after the Chinese 
business died out, at from about $6,000 to over $10,000 in 1917, of 



82 History of Franklin County 

which latter total $797.75 was for livery and for work in connection 
with the federal draft. In 1914 the charge for automobile hire and 
livery alone was over eleven hundred dollars. When the sheriff's bills 
first touched four thousand dollars there was ugly talk by taxpayers 
that tramps and bums were in league with the officials to put themselves 
in the way of arrest, so that they themselves might be assured in winter 
of free lodging and board, the officers of fees payable by taxation, and 
the jail of a good business. The suspicion may have been uncharitable 
and unfounded, and the same may be true of the thought that comes 
all unbidden as the present itemized bills are scrutinized, viz., that the 
run of jail fare must now be better than in the period when the sheriff 
himself had to supply it, and also better than it would be if the old 
system obtained, though, of course, it is not to be forgotten that the 
scale of prices for everything is far higher than it used to be. Though 
often discussed and advocated, no intelligent action was taken until 

1915 to provide for remunerative employment for jail convicts here. 
Then a county farm was purchased, and the sheriff reports that in 

1916 it was worked by prisoners at a cost of $674 for fertilizer, seed, 
tools and extra labor, and in 1917 with an expenditure for like purposes 
amounting to $974.66. Its products in the former year were valued at 
$906.92, and in the latter at $2,642.38. But the sheriff does not rate 
the investment as so desirable because of the profit which it yields as 
because the employment of the convicts benefits their health and gen- 
eral condition. Now that the traffic in liquors has been prohibited it is 
thought to be uncertain if there will be enough prisoners to work the 
property advantageously. 

In 1810 the county clerk drew $12 from the county for services, in 1834 
only $79.76, and $473.27 in 1849. The clerk of the board of supervisors 
never had as much as $40 in any one year, including expenditures for 
stationery, until 1847, when his salary was fixed at $60 per annum. It 
has since been increased from time to time until it is now $550, making 
the position at least as highly paid, considering time given and service 
rendered, as any office in the county with possibly one exception. In 
1847 the salary of the county judge was made $600, and was twice 
increased during the next fifteen years — first to $700 and then to 
$800. It was next made $1,000, was doubled in 1873, and recently was 
advanced to $3,200, with allowances of $1,000 for clerk and an equal 
amount for stenographer. The salary of the district attorney was $300 
in 1853, then $400, and by a number of increases has become $1,800. 



Franklin County Official Acts 8S 

The cost of the court house alterations and of the erection of the 
jail in 1852 and 1853 exceeded the estimates, and an additional sum of 
$1,032.74 was voteo to cover the deficiency. 

It appears that until 1825 use of the court house had been permitted 
to all organizations and to all individuals whenever it was wanted, for 
almost any purpose, without charge except for cleaning; but in that 
year the supervisors resolved that occupancy must be paid for at a fair 
price except in cases where the usage should be for public purposes or 
by the people of the town of Malone. 

In 1847 foreign paupers admitted to the poor house introduced ship 
fever (a form of typhus), and Matthew A. Whipple, keeper, or some 
member of his family, contracted the disease. The supervisors voted 
him forty dollars as reimbursement for the amount paid by him for 
physician's services. 

At this period and for some time later licenses were granted by 
commissioners of excise who represented the county as a whole, and 
apparently there were no no-license towns, as every town in the county 
except Bellmont, Brighton, Duane, Franklin and Harrietstown is listed 
in the commissioners' reports as having licensed places; and in most of 
the excepted towns those who wished to engage in the traffic were accus- 
tomed to do so without bothering with the formality of taking out 
licenses. The fee charged for licenses in earliest times was from three 
to five dollars, but in this period usually ranged from thirty dollars to 
fifty dollars each. 

The report of the superintendent of the poor for 1857 placed the 
cost of maintaining paupers in the poor house at thirty-seven and a 
half cents each per week, exclusive of such products of the farm as were 
consumed. A year or two later this cost was put at forty-two cents, and 
once it was stated at over a dollar. 

A retaining wall in front of the county buildings, made necessary 
by the grading of the street, was built in 1857. 

Civil "War Expenses 
In 1863 the burden of the war obligations began to be heavy, nearly 
every town in the county having issued bonds to provide funds for 
bounties to those who would enlist, and so avert resort to a draft for 
filling the quota that each town was required to furnish. A part of 
these bonds became due in that year, and included in the town taxes 
were items ranging from nine hundred dollars to two thousand dollars 



84 History of Franklin County 

per town on account of such obligations. A special session of the 
supervisors was held in August, 1864, to provide for county bounties, 
and it was voted that the county pay three hundred dollars to every 
man who should enlist or furnish a substitute under the President's call 
for half a million more men. The usual price asked at this time by 
those offering themselves as substitutes (many of whom came from 
Canada expressly to so enlist) was a thousand dollars, which was paid 
by not a few who were anxious to escape the draft, or were actually 
drafted. Afterward these were reimbursed by town, county and State 
to the aggregate of the bounties that the three had offered, so that the 
net costs to individuals who had procured substitutes was reduced to 
one or two hundred dollars each. In November, 1864, the county 
treasurer reported to the supervisors that to that date he had issued 
bounty bonds to the number of 299, each of the denomination of $300, 
with 23 yet to be issued, or a total of $96,600; and that it would be 
necessary to include in the tax levy an item of $35,581 for principal 
alone that would become due in 1865. At the same session sums to pay 
town bounty bonds were raised in varying amounts for the several 
towns — Duane's being the lowest ($749) and Chateaugay's the highest 
($10,439). In addition, the county had to contribute $9,788 toward 
the bounties paid by the State. Principally because of these items, the 
county budget, which had been $30,662 in 1863, bounded to $170,248.67, 
and, besides, the town taxes were enormous — the bounties paid by 
these calling for an aggregate of $85,105 — and the lowest tax rate for 
any town was $18 on each $1,000 of assessment (in Malone), while in 
most towns it ran from thirty-odd dollars up to fifty or sixty dollars, 
and for Franklin was ninety-three dollars, or over nine per cent.! 

Another special session was held in February, 1865, to vote further 
bounties for enlistments under the President's call of December, 1864 
for 300,000 men, and there was authorized an issue of bonds to pro- 
vide for payment of a bounty of $600 to every man who should enlist 
or furnish a substitute, but with provision that no town should on its 
own account pay a bounty in excess of $25. At the annual session in 
the same year there had to be included in the town taxes varying items 
for town bounties theretofore paid — the lowest of which was $990 in 
Constable, and the largest $10,760 in Malone. The county budget 
totaled $71,018, with Malone again having the lowest rate (twenty dol- 
lars and a half), and Franklin the highest (ninety-seven dollars and a 
half) ! In this year the town taxes alone were $108,153, of which 



Franklin County Official Acts 85 

$94,120 were on account of bounties. In 1866 and 1867 the bounty pay- 
ments became smaller generally, though in the former year Chateaugay 
had to raise $12,140 for that purpose, and Malone $15,552 in the latter 
year. 

Voted to Build a New Poor House 

At the annual session in 1869 it was voted to build a new poor house, 
and a committee was appointed to procure plans and estimates of cost, 
which were to be reported at a special session in January, 1870. At 
such session bonds to the amount of $25,000 were authorized to be 
issued for the work, and Samuel C. Wead and Baker Stevens of Malone 
and James Jordan of Burke were constituted a committee to supervise 
the work, with power to engage a competent man to have immediate 
supervision. Hiram Hoyt of Malone acted in the latter capacity, 
and Albert A. Bounds of Malone was awarded the contract for con- 
structing the building. A structure ' of brick and stone was erected 
on the county farm, two miles west of the village of Malone, at a cost 
of $38,628.75. 

In 1870 the county system of granting licenses was displaced by 
putting the matter into the hands of town and village commissioners, 
and at once the number of towns in which licenses had been granted 
became fewer. The no-license towns in 1870 were : Bellmont, Bran- 
don, Brighton, Burke, Constable, Dickinson, Duane, Fort Covington 
and Harrietstown. 

Supervisors' Sessions More Protracted 
Nothing that need be particularized appears in the record of the 
supervisors' proceedings from 1870 to 1878 except that the annual 
sessions, which until 1874 had never been prolonged beyond a week, 
had come to continue for nine, ten or eleven days, with the practice of 
allowing each supervisor pay for two or three extra days because of work 
done evenings, and the supervisors from Brighton, Duane, Franklin and 
Harrietstown pay for five extra days because each of them had to be two 
days longer on the road than those from the other towns; that the last 
bounty for killing a wolf was paid in 1875 ; that the county's share of 
the State tax had been persistently growing greater, having reached its 
maximum ($54,024.23) in 1872; and that the cost of maintaining the 
poor had grown to more than $14,000 per year. 

A company of the national guard having been organized in Malone, 
its commandant in 1878 filed a demand with the board of supervisors 



86 History of Franklin County 

that an armory be provided for its use. Accordingly the old Baptist 
church building on Webster street was bought at the price of $1,200. 
Afterward $1,212.75 was spent upon needed alterations, and the fol- 
lowing year $200 additional. The building was made to answer the 
company's needs until an armory was built by the State, and in 1893 
it was sold for $1,050. It was used also for holding courts while the new 
court house was being built, and the use of it was voted to the village 
school district of Malone when the central school building was burned 
in 1882. 

Until 1879 the sessions of the board of supervisors were always held 
at one of the hotels in the village of Malone — apparently at first with- 
out any payment for the accommodation. Later it was customary for 
several years to pay ten or twelve dollars for the rooms, and eventually 
the price became one hundred dollars. The sessions were then held for 
two or three years at the court house, but in 1882 the practice of sitting 
at a hotel was restored, and continued for a few years. 

The loan of $5,000 in 1851 for altering the court house and erecting 
a new jail, which debt was to run for only ten years, was paid in 1879 
and 1880. 

The reports of the commissioners of excise in 1880 showed only 
Bombay, Constable, Franklin, Malone and Moira as license towns. 

A number of attempts to divide the town of Dickinson had been made 
and failed prior to 1880, but then succeeded. The part set off was to 
be known as the town of Waverly. 

It is noteworthy that in at least one year at about this time the 
supervisors assumed to draw pay for acting as a board of county can- 
vassers and also as supervisors. Thus if their service covered, say, ten 
days in both capacities, they allowed themselves pay for eleven days. 

A New Court House 

The matter of building a new court house had been proposed a number 
of times during the ten years preceding 1882, but never commanded 
much support until that year, when the proposition was carried almost 
unanimously. A special session of the board was held in January, 
1883, to complete arrangements for the work, for which it was agreed 
to expend $30,000 and also $1,800 for the purchase of a strip of land 
thirty feet wide on the east of the county's lands, the latter of which 
had more than five times as much frontage in the same vicinity, and 
had been acquired for $100., When details came to be determined, it 



Franklin County Official. Acts 87 

was seriously proposed that as a matter of economy the jail and clerk's 
office both be provided for in the new building, but wiser counsels pre- 
vailed, and it was determined to locate only the surrogate's and county 
treasurer's offices in it. Leslie C. Wead of Malone, Benjamin F. Harris 
of Moira, and James Y. Cameron of Fort Covington were appointed a 
building committee, and the contract for materials and work was 
awarded to James Houston of Malone at $29,500 — which did not 
include heating apparatus, lighting or furnishing. Mr. Houston 
claimed before the supervisors the next year that he had lost $10,000 on 
the work, and the board allowed him something like $2,000 in addition 
to extra allowances that the building committee had granted. Including 
these extra allowances, and architect's fees, heating, lighting, furniture 
and compensation of the building committee, the entire cost to the 
county was not far from $35,000. Mr. Wead was succeeded on the 
building committee by Daniel H. Stanton, and the sums paid to the 
members were: To Mr. Wead and Mr. Harris $300 each, to Mr. 
Cameron $150, and to Mr. Stanton $100. 

A proposition to build a new jail and a new clerk's office the same 
year was defeated. 

For ten years or such a matter the towns Brighton and Harrietstown 
had been coveting territory included in Brandon, and had appealed to 
the supervisors several times to set off large tracts therefrom and join 
the same to the applicants. Brighton never realized on the effort, but 
in 1883 Harrietstown's appeal was granted in part, a township and a 
half having been then taken from Brandon. 

The office of surrogate's clerk was created at the session of 1883, and 
the salary fixed at $400 per year. 

In 1885 it was voted to pay the county clerk $654 a year for his 
services to the county in lieu of fees therefor — the salary having been 
fixed at the seemingly odd figures because it represented the average 
of the clerk's charges and allowances for the few years immediately 
preceding. 

In 1885 the sheriff's bill as allowed was $5,513.44, and the cost of 
supporting the poor was $15,447.20. In the same year fuel for the 
jail and court house cost $400, as against $30 allowed the sheriff forty 
years before for the same purpose. 

New Jail and Clerk's Office 
Again in this year the proposition to build a new jail and clerk's 
office was considered, and a committee was appointed to look into the 



88 History of Franklin County 

matter and report in 1886, but the question was allowed to drag with- 
out much attention until 1891, when, the county not owing a dollar, it 
was decided to build. At a special session of the supervisors in 1892 
a committee previously appointed reported that a new jail would cost 
$18,200 and a new clerk's office from $12,000 to $14,000. E. A. Buell 
of Constable, E. E. Tower of Bangor, Dwight Dickinson of Malone and 
A. B. Fuller of Duane were named a building committee, and the sum 
of $32,000 was appropriated for the work. Orville Moore served as 
superintendent of construction. The committee's final report placed the 
cost for both buildings at $36,960.09, less $598 received for dirt sold, but 
plus $1,600 for furnishings for the clerk's office and $609.60 allowance 
to the committee for services. 

The State having appropriated $25,000 for the construction of an 
armory at Malone, a site was purchased by the county in 1892 at a cost 
of $3,800. 

Officials Eefund Fees 

The compensation of the county clerk for county services was 
increased in 1889 to $800, which five years later that official deemed 
inadequate and refused to accept; and, therefore, there was a return to 
the fee system, under which bills for county work ranged for the ensuing 
eighteen years from $1,274 to $2,184 per year; but an examination by 
a representative of the State comptroller in 1911 disclosed that some 
part of the charges had been made for services which a strict construc- 
tion of the statutes required to be rendered gratuitously. Bills for six 
years preceding were accordingly re-audited, and claims presented by 
the supervisors for a refund of all unwarranted charges of date within 
the statute of limitations. As a result, one former clerk repaid $3,257 to 
the county, and the then incumbent $656. There was no suggestion 
or suspicion on the part of anybody that the unlawful bills reflected 
any intentional wrong, but only a mistaken assumption of a right to 
charge and to be recompensed for all actual services. In 1909 the 
office had netted the clerk $4,484. In 1911 the supervisors established 
a salary of $4,000 a year for the office in lieu of fees, for all of which 
the clerk was to account to the county, and out of his salary pay his 
help. But an opinion by the attorney-general held that the super- 
visors' action did not require the clerk to pay to the county allowances 
made to him by the State for work in connection with collection of the 
mortgage tax, nor the percentage that he received in connection with 
the issuing and reporting of hunting licenses, which two items aggre- 



Franklin County Official Acts 89 

gate perhaps $500 or $600 annually, and so make the gross compen- 
sation, say, $4,500 a year, and the net probably about $3,000. The 
reports of the clerk since he was placed on a salary basis show- 
earnings of the office paid over to the county treasurer varying in 
amounts from $3,317 to $4,274 a year; but these statements make no 
account of the charges which would have had to be paid under the old 
system for services by the clerk for the county, amounting perhaps to 
$800 or $1,000 per annum. 

The town of Brandon, from which a township and a half were set 
off in 1883 to be added to Harrietstown, was further partitioned in 1888 
to form Santa Clara, and still again in 1896 to add another half town- 
ship to the latter. Waverly was partitioned in 1890 to erect Altamont. 

The Influx of Chinamen 
In 1897 additional land adjacent to the county buildings was bought 
for $350, and a barn erected thereon for the .sheriff, which was remodeled 
at a cost of $3,410 in 1902 into a detention house for Chinese prisoners. 
Chinamen had begun about 1890 to drift across the Canadian border 
into the county in violation of the exclusion act — sometimes singly or 
in couples, and occasionally in larger, though still in small, numbers, and 
were picked up by United States officials and lodged in jail. After a 
time such arrivals became numerous, overcrowding the jail, and it 
became necessary to make other provisions for their care. The jail barn, 
made available for the purpose, was leased by the federal government, 
and became a detention house. At times there were more than 200 
Chinamen in the jail, and 300 or 400 in the detention house. The jail 
inmates were mainly those who straggled across the international bound- 
ary by themselves and also those who, after confinement in the detention 
house, had been ordered deported. Those in the detention house were 
arrivals over the Canadian Pacific Bailroad, who had been received at 
the border by federal officials, to be held in custody until their right 
to be admitted should be adjudicated — the railroad company having 
contracted with our government to be at the expense of caring for them 
in the meantime, and if they should be denied admittance to return 
them to China. For the board of those in jail the United States paid 
the county three dollars per week each. All had money, and were accus- 
tomed to spend it freely in satisfying their wants — those in the jail 
buying meats and other food when the regular jail fare was not to their 
liking, and doing their own cooking. Often they received articles of 



90 History of Franklin County 

food direct from China. The actual cost for their board was under a 
dollar per week per head, so that the county cleared two dollars and 
more on its contract with the federal government. Its receipts from 
this source ranged from $296 to $4,196 a year; but the business began 
to fall off after a time, and practically disappeared in 1911. The rail- 
road company doubtless found that with so many deported it was not 
profitable to continue bringing them here, or perhaps the Chinese them- 
selves concluded that the price they had to pay for coming when most 
of them were denied a right to remain was more than the trip was 
worth. 

The sessions of the board of supervisors naturally increased in length 
as the county grew and its business became greater and more compli- 
cated, so that whereas formerly the sessions had continued only for one 
week they extended in 1898 to seventeen days, in 1903 to twenty-three 
days, and in 1917 to twenty-eight days exclusive of two extra sessions, 
at a cost of $4,320.39. 

Cost of Supporting the Poor 
In 1904 the expense of relieving the poor and supporting the poor 
house was $16,395.67 plus $500 voted for expenditure by Grand Army 
posts on account of indigent veterans. For 1917 this expense had 
increased to $29,695.10 without counting products of the farm (valued 
at $4,003.79) consumed by inmates of the poor house, the increase 
having been due in part to a larger number of paupers, but more to the 
higher prices for food, clothing, etc. The superintendent of the poor 
informs me that the showing for 1918 will be better because of the 
suppression of the liquor traffic in a number of towns. Many families 
which formerly have had to have poor relief every winter supported 
themselves in 1918. 

Town Meetings in the Fall 
In 1902 the town meetings were held for the first time concurrently 
with the general election in November, but the next year the super- 
visors voted unanimously that the arrangement had not worked satis- 
factorily, and provided for a return to the plan of holding them in the 
spring. In 1917, however, it was ordered that thereafter they be held 
at the general election in odd-numbered years, which seems to me a 
mistaken policy. There is no institution under our form of government 
that is so educative in regard to public affairs as the old-fashioned 
town meeting, where all taxpayers can assemble, thresh out their town 



Franklin County Official, Acts 91 

problems and business, and determine expenditures after full discussion. 
At a general election, however, there can be no opportunity for explana- 
tions, and the taxpayers must simply accept or reject rather blindly 
the propositions which a town board may submit. Thus home rule 
goes practically out of the control of the taxpayers as a body, and 
almost entirely into the hands of a few town officials. 

Improvement of Highways 

By 1903 public sentiment on the highway question was becoming 
aroused, and there was earnest demand for road improvement. In that 
year the supervisors recommended that the all-money plan of caring 
for the highways be made mandatory, and that the practice of commut- 
ing road taxes by labor be abolished. In addition, a number of towns 
had previously taken up this question, and had bonded themselves in 
considerable amounts for the improvement of particular roads and for 
building bridges. A beginning along right lines having been made, 
there was no halting it, and two or three years later the supervisors 
voted, eighteen to one, to apply for the county's full share of road con- 
struction under the fifty million dollar State bond issue. In 1906 peti- 
tion was formally made for improvement by the State of 133 miles of 
roads in the county, with specification of the roads, so that every town 
should have its equitable mileage, and with assumption by the towns 
and the county of the proportionate part of the cost to be borne by each. 
This interest, late in developing, continued and extended until in 1911 
the supervisors determined to bond the county for half a million dol- 
lars for the improvement of highways, which now cost $60,000 a year 
to maintain — the county providing two-thirds and the State one- 
third. The county is paying, besides, $10,000 a year on the debt, and 
over $20,000 for interest. Our highway expenditures thus total annually 
more than the entire county tax of 1910. 

Breaches of Trust 

From earliest times down to 1897 the duties of each of the county 
officials had been discharged, if not always with the highest efficiency, 
at least without default or embezzlement. But upon the death of the 
then county treasurer in 1898 it was discovered that he was short 
$3,542.99 in his accounts, and some years later a successor was found 
to have appropriated to his own use $15,051.80 of county moneys, and 
a superintendent of the poor also went wrong. The shortages of both 



92 



History of Franklin County 



were replaced, and the county lost nothing except the moneys which 
it had to spend in investigation. Both officials were indicted and 
convicted. 

Increase in County Expenses 
The items in the County budget for 1910 aggregated $60,253.03, 
but appear in the printed record as totaling $61,183.33 — a discrep- 
ancy of $930.30. The budgets have been increasing almost continuously 
ever since 1910, and in 1917 amounted to $227,146.94. The figures for 
the intermediate years are : 

In 1911 $108, 158 43 

In 1912 123, 438 68 

In 1913 145, 719 90 

In 1914 195, 897 89 

In 1915 240, 259 20 

In 1916 189, 822 08 



The explanation of the very large amount in 1915 is that highway 
expenses that year were $18,000 in excess of those for 1917, the State 
tax also was more, and the purchase of a jail farm cost $5,300. The 
budgets for 1910 and 1917 are herewith shown: 

1910 1917 

State tax None $24, 552 33 

State tax for stenographer $837 79 526 91 

Justices, constables and coroners' accounts 1, 240 55 2,069 34 

School commissioners' expenses* 600 00 

Miscellaneous county accounts 9, 373 31 2, 386 92 

County Clerk • ■ 1 , 874 14 700 00 

Poor fund 14.000 00 28.000 00 

Armory fund 3,601 25 3,405 69 

Court fundi • • None 6. 000 00 

Bills of charitable institutions 7, 241 1 1 16, 756 22 

Bills of reform schools and penal institutions:!: 1,804 27 

Repairs, etc., at poor house 600 00 1 , 400 00 

Erroneous assessment 134 28 23 49 

Highways 4, 266 39 79, 252 51 

Printing$ 1,256 00 

Debentures of the board of supervisors 3,287 68 4, 000 00 

Contingent fund None 870 72 

Investigation of treasurer's and superintendent of 

the poor's accounts 933 03 None 

Miscellaneous 667 50 None 

Supplies for jailf 7, 000 00 

Repairs, coal, etc., for county buildingst 7, 863 78 

Society Prevention of Cruelty to Animals None 150 00 

* The office of school commissioner has been abolished, and the expenses of the 
district superintendents of schools are now paid by the State. 

t Payment of court expenses, and apparently for supplies for the jail and also for 
fuel, was made in 1910 from surplus moneys in the treasury. 

I The items for reform schools and penal institutions and for printing were included 
in miscellaneous county accounts in 1910 ; the amount of the printing bills in that 
year was $2,713.84, and the like item of $2,256 for 1917 includes only a part of 
the printing charges for that year. 



Franklin County Official Acts 93 

1910 1917 

Tuberculosis poor fund None $1, 000 00 

Salary and expenses of visting nurse None 1,300 00 

Soldiers and Sailors' relief 805 00 

Home defense company None 5 , 596 56 

Board of elections, salaries and expenses None 3,444 60 

Purchase of land for enlargement of armory None 6,683 11 

Salary county judge and surrogate $2, 000 00 3, 200 00 

Supplies and office expenses of surrogate 300 00 

Salary of surrogate's stenographer 700 00 1, 000 00 

Salary of surrogate's clerk 720 00 1, 000 00 

Salary of district attorney 1,500 00 1,800 00 

Office expenses of district attorney • • . . 126 77 

Salary of county treasurer and assistant 1,200 00 1,700 00 

Supplies and bond for county treasurer 725 00 

Salary of superintendent of the poor 700 00 900 00 

Salary of keeper of the poor house . 500 00 600 00 

Salary of matron of the poor house 200 00 200 00 

Salary of janitor of county buildings 600 00 900 00 

Salary of sheriff and help § 2, 806 00 3, 606 00 

Salary of poor house physician 100 00 100 00 

Salary and expenses of sealer of weights and 

measures 600 00 850 00 

Salary and expenses of probation officer None 791 72 

Salary and expenses of farm bureau manager None 2, 500 00 

$60, 253 03 $227, 146 94 



The board of elections was created in 1911, a revision of the election 
law having required a transfer from the county clerk to such body of 
the duties of administering the law and of providing ballots, etc. So 
far as can be judged, the only additional expense thereby imposed is 
the difference in salaries, amounting to a few hundred dollars, between 
the amounts formerly paid and those now allowed. 

The farm bureau was established in 1912, and the expense of main- 
taining it is shared by the federal, State and county governments and 
by its individual members. The State contributes $600 yearly, and 
the United States $1,200. Membership is voluntary, but must include 
at least 1,000 in order to make the federal part of the fund available. 
A manager of the bureau gives all of his time to the work, and aims to 
be of practical assistance to the farmers in procuring help and seed for 
them, in testing soils, in advising as to methods to be employed, and 
in a score or more of other ways. It is believed to be one of the best 
investments that the county ever made. 

In 1917 the State appropriated $40,000 for an enlargement of the 
armory in Malone, and the county had to purchase the land on which 
to build the extension — paying $6,683.11 for it. 



§ This item for 1917 includes $800 for help and supplies for the jail farm. 



CHAPTER III 
FRANKLIN COUNTY POLITICALLY 

Though the writer does not purpose to venture into the field of 
general history except as it may seem essential to make understandable 
the recital of local affairs, it will not, I hope, be thought pedantic 
if a brief statement be given concerning the conditions and causes that 
led to the formation, rise and fall of the important political parties 
that the county has known. 

Originally the political groupings of voters in the United States 
were as Federalists and anti-Federalists; the former the followers of 
Alexander Hamilton, or at least believers with him in a form of govern- 
ment which should possess in itself sufficient powers and resources to 
maintain the character and defend the integrity of the nation, and the 
latter, professing with Thomas Jefferson a fear that centralization of 
power at Washington might endanger popular liberty, opposed to a 
strong government and in favor of State sovereignty. The anti-Fed- 
eralists came to be known in New York about 1790 as Eepublicans, 
which designation continued until about 1830, when the name Demo- 
cratic was adopted, and has since continued. Thus the Democratic 
party of to-day may trace its lineage almost unbroken from the merging 
of the Colonies into States to the present, even if as much may not be 
said concerning its consistent and steadfast adherence to the principles 
and policies that distinguished it in the beginning. While the Federal 
party was strong enough in New York to elect a Governor twice prior 
to 1800, it never afterward was able to command under that title a 
majority of the votes in any distinctively State contest, though in a 
number of years it did control the Legislature and Council of Appoint- 
ment (thus enjoying in such years control of appointment of all county 
officials), and for a long time made itself a considerable factor in deter- 
mining general election results by allying itself quietly with one or 
another of the factions into which the Eepublicans split. This split 
was in large measure over the question of the party leadership of DeWitt 
Clinton as a Eepublican, Tammany being bitterly inimical to him, 
which enmity increased and extended to other parts of the State as he 
came to be suspected of secret leanings to Federalism and of friendliness 
to the appointment of Federalists to public office. Beginning in 1816, 

[94] 



. Franklin County Politically 95 

political conditions and party alignments in New York became very 
confused, if not actually chaotic, and so continued for a dozen years 
or more, and the straight .Republican of one day was found not infre- 
quently to have gone over to the Clintonians the next, or vice versa, 
without any clearly explained or even conjectured reason. The Federal- 
ists as an organization utterly disappeared, and no compact and dis- 
tinctive party succeeded them until in 1832, when the Whig party was 
organized and named, though it continued nevertheless for a few years 
to be called at times National Eepublican also. 

The anti-Masonic party sprang into existence, made its campaigns 
of venomous bitterness, and disappeared in this same period. It grew 
out of the kidnapping of William Morgan at Canandaigua in 1826, and 
his alleged murder a few weeks later near Niagara Falls, because he 
was about to publish a book revealing the secrets of Masonry. The 
feeling engendered was intense and widespread. Here in Franklin 
county those Masons who adhered to the order (and they were good 
citizens) naturally felt that the men who attacked their organization in 
general, and in particular fought against the election of any member 
of it to public office, were making a wholly gratuitous and unjustifiable 
assault upon them personally, as well as doing injustice to the order 
itself. Upon the other hand, the anti-Masons complained that the 
Masons, in their resentment, were retaliating in an unfair manner by 
attempting social ostracism and by establishing what in these days we 
should call a boycott of their business. The warfare continued actively 
for a number of years, and men of the highest character, including 
clergymen, renounced their affiliation with Masonry, some of them 
inveighing against it, while others, simply disavowing belief that the 
order was evil, announced that they abandoned connection with it solely 
in order to avoid giving offense to others. The charter of the lodge in 
Malone was lost, though its jewels were preserved, and it was not until 
1854 that the lodge was revived and a new charter obtained. Even as 
late as forty years after the organized political movement had disap- 
peared there remained individuals in Franklin county who would not 
in any circumstances vote for a Mason for any office, no matter how 
high his qualifications otherwise might be. 

At about the time of the disappearance of the anti-Masonic party, 
the Abolition party sprang into existence, composed of restless spirits 
possessing brilliant intellectual powers, unbounded moral and physical 
courage, and a profound conviction that slavery was a crime against the 



96 History of Fbanklin County 

moral and divine commandment. Its members were a proscribed and 
persecuted class, denounced unsparingly by both of the great political 
parties, condemned even by many of the churches, and subjected to 
mob demonstrations almost everywhere that they carried their agita- 
tion. They were devoted to the utter destruction of slavery by every 
instrumentality which they could lawfully employ. In Franklin county 
they apparently never had a party organization, and never polled 
more than about one hundred votes. The county did have, however, as 
early as 1835 an anti-slavery society without political character or par- 
tisan activity. Its membership was not large, nor did it include more 
than a few of the more prominent and influential men of the period. 
Its purpose was solely to oppose slavery by protest and by education 
of public opinion against it. 

Interest attaching to elections in Franklin county in early years was 
necessarily almost entirely general, with little individual or personal 
significance in any of the contests, for the reason that until 1822 all 
county officials were appointed by the Governor and Council and all 
members of Assembly except two, all State Senators and all members 
of Congress elected until the year stated were residents of other coun- 
ties, and practically unknown by the local electorate. Until 1842 gen- 
eral elections were continued from day to day and from place to place, 
at first through a period of five days, and afterward for three days, the 
idea being in those times of sparse and widely scattered settlement to 
take the polls as near as practicable to the voters instead of requiring 
the electors to travel long distances, or multiplying election districts. 
There was a property qualification for voters until 1822, and for a 
long time elections for State officials and members of the Legislature 
were held in April instead of in the fall. 

Party Alignments 
Official records of Franklin county election returns are not pro- 
curable in complete form prior to 1822, but such fragmentary reports 
as I have been able to gather appear to justify the statement that from 
the date of the county's erection until 1843, a period of thirty-five 
years, it was almost uniformly anti-Eepublican, or, to use the less 
confusing description, anti-Democratic. In 1822, 1823, 1829, 1830, and 
1831, however, the Eepublicans (Democrats) carried .the county, while 
in every other year the Federalists, Clintonian Federalists, anti- 
Masons or Whigs were in the majority. The majorities were usually 



Fkanklix County Politically 97 

under three hundred, though in 1827 the Clintonians had eight hundred 
and forty votes in a total vote of eleven hundred and twenty-six. 

That the county was Federal in its political proclivities fur so many 
years does not seem strange when it is remembered that the people 
were so largely of Xew England stock, where anti-Republican sentiment 
was strongly predominant. Originally the Federalists had included 
most of the statesmen of prominence and wealth in New York, and 
thus the party came in time to be regarded as representative of aris- 
tocracy, which of itself naturally tended to alienate the " plain people." 

A Campaign Story 

As hearing upon this point, a campaign story is pertinent. William 
A. Wheeler had addressed a Whig political meeting at Bombay, where 
his position as the agent of a non-resident who had large land interests 
there had given him a close acquaintance with many of the people, and 
Avon for him their favorable regard. A few days later Joseph R. 
Flanders followed him at a Democratic meeting, and, speaking highly 
of Mr. Wheeler as a man and neighbor, yet proceeded to urge his hear- 
ers not to vote for him hecause, however estimable he might be per- 
sonally, his habits of life and of thought unfitted him to represent the 
county sympathetically and understandingly of the wants, needs and 
convictions of the great body of the people. Mr. Flanders characterized 
Mr. Wheeler as an aristocrat, whereupon one of the auditors, a settler 
with whom Mr. Wheeler had dealt considerately and forbearingly, 
arose, and shouted — "It's a domned lie, sor, for he has drank whiskey 
with me in my own kitchen out of a taycup." 

An Extraordinary Campaign 
An extraordinary campaign for representative in Congress occurred 
in 1836. The Democratio candidate was Captain James B. Spencer of 
Fort Covington, and Asa Hascall of Malone the Whig nominee. Mr. 
Hascall looms as the biggest and most esteemed citizen of the county 
for many years, with the possible exception of Luther Bradish. Mr. 
HasealTs character appeal's to have been reproachless, his ati 
the bar very high, his aptitude for public service remarkable, and his 
popularity and the esteem in which be was held great. In only a 
single instance out of many does he appear to have failed to carry his 
town and the county whenever he was a candidate for office. He was 
District Attorney by appointment by the Governor from 1818 to 1841 
4 



98 History of Franklin County 

and again from 1843 to 1847. He was also a Member of Assembly in 
1825, 1826, 1835 and 1839; supervisor of Malone from 1818 to 1835, 
and from 1840 to 1842, besides having served four terms of four years 
each as justice of the peace. He was once defeated for the Assembly, 
and was at least twice an unsuccessful candidate for Congress and once 
for Senator — being beaten, however, not by an adverse vote in Franklin 
county, but by majorities against him in the other counties comprising 
the district. Mr. Hascall died January 5, 1852, aged sixty-six years. 
The Palladium said of him that he " was a great and good man;' and 
that " members of the bar were accustomed to look to him with a feeling 
bordering on reverence, as a pattern of integrity and worth in 
their profession. * * * His influence was great and unbounded, 
and employed to good account." The remarkable character of the cam- 
paign of 1836 consisted in the fact that it was waged by the Whigs not 
merely as a matter of partisan opposition to Captain Spencer, but also 
upon the grounds of crime alleged to have been committed by him, a 
most unusual course in this county. Indeed, I recall only one other 
instance in the county's history where a like attack was made openly 
and venomously against a candidate. By circulars and newspaper pub- 
lication it was charged against Captain Spencer that he had been a 
participant in the attempts to defraud the government through under- 
taking to collect raised and fictitious claims growing out of • war losses 
in 1813, and had also been arrested for passing counterfeit money in 
Vermont before coming to Franklin county to make his home. The 
story of these war claims is told in another chapter, but will bear recital 
of additional details. The man behind them was one David Jones, who 
resided at Fort Covington, and was a brother-in-law of Captain Spen- 
cer. According to a public document comprising a part of the record 
of Congress in 1817, the government had sent a special agent to Fort 
Covington in that year to investigate, and that agent reported that 
Jones had offered him $10,000 for a few weeks' work, if he would join 
in getting the claims allowed. Jones said that he had $20,000 lying 
idle, and would buy all the claims for a small sum, increase the amount 
of each, prove them by fictitious witnesses, and make from $100,000 to 
$150,000 out of the venture. The special agent found in his investiga- 
tion that many of the claimants who appeared to have made affidavits 
covering their cases had in fact either not sworn to anything definite 
beyond the fact that they had received no pay for their losses, or else 
that they denied having any knowledge of what the affidavits con- 



Franklin County Politically 99 

tained. One of these claims was by Benjamin Sanborn, a former resi- 
dent of Chateaugay, who represented that when the British visited that 
place in 1814 they seized property of his worth $180 (a claim for 
which the United States government was not liable anyway), while his 
claim as it reached Washington was for $5,100. It appeared to be 
attested by affidavit of Captain Spencer to the effect that the latter 
knew it to be correct and just, and Captain Spencer appeared also to have 
taken the affidavits of " paper " witnesses to this and other claims (called 
" paper " witnesses because there were no such persons) . Captain 
Spencer's defense was a denial that he had made the false affidavit or 
taken affidavits of non-existent men, insisting that these were all for- 
geries. In regard to the charge of having passed counterfeit money, I 
have been unable to ascertain what defense was made, but in view of 
the fact that, after having left Vermont and forfeited his bail there, 
he voluntarily returned, and does not appear to have had any proceed- 
ings pressed against him, it may be conjectured that a satisfactory 
explanation was forthcoming. It was also charged against Captain 
Spencer that he had smuggled broadcloth for a cape from Dundee, and 
that when the garment had been seized he induced his tailor to commit 
perjury by swearing that the garment had been purchased from him 
on this side of the line. Captain Spencer was a judge of the court of 
common pleas, postmaster at Fort Covington, and also a deputy col- 
lector of customs. He had borne a good reputation generally in the 
county, and was regarded as a respectable citizen. While Mr. Hascall 
carried Franklin county against him by one hundred and fifty-nine, 
Captain Spencer received about eight hundred majority in St. Lawrence, 
and was elected. 

The Exciting Campaign of 1840 
The campaign of 1840 was the most enthusiastic and exciting ever 
known up to that year, and was the first characterized by spectacular 
features. The Van Buren administration, charged with responsibility 
for the financial panic in 1837, attacked for tyranny and extravagance, 
and for indulging the most expensive and luxurious living in office, 
had inflamed the AVhigs, and such Democrats as repudiated General 
Jackson and Van Buren, to the degree that they were profoundly con- 
vinced that patriotism even more than partisanship required the elec- 
tion of General Harrison, popularly known as "Tippecanoe." Public 
feeling was yet further inflamed by the sneer of Democrats to the effect 
that General Harrison lived in a lou; cabin and drank bard eider, for 



100 Histoey or Feanklin County 

there were millions who themselves had been born in log cabins or still 
lived in them, and the sneer was interpreted as an insult to honest pov- 
erty. Thus the log cabin, the coon and the cider barrel were made the 
campaign insignia of the Whigs, and, with the military record and 
appealing personality of General Harrison, served to arouse a feeling on 
the part of the people generally that was sure to lead to victory. Every 
voter had his song book and political textbook. One of the songs of 
especial popularity ran that "Van might from his coolers of silver 
drink wine, and lounge on his cushioned settee," while Tippecanoe upon 
his buckeye bench was content with cider; and speakers pictured 
Van Buren as using gold forks and spoons in a palace. Political meet- 
ings were attended by twenty thousand, sixty thousand, and even a 
hundred thousand people, drawn from a number of States, literally 
" acres of people assembled," and most of them camping for two or 
three days at a time in tents or hastily built cabins, though wherever 
such meetings were held it was the custom of every Whig in the place 
to fling flags from his windows or the roof, and to " hang the latch- 
string out," as proclamation that his house was open and free to those 
in want of lodgings. In many places cabins were erected in public 
parks or on street corners, to serve as club or committee rooms and rally- 
ing points, and always at the door was a cider barrel, and tacked on 
the wall a coon skin. Every town in Franklin county had its own Tippe- 
canoe Club, and Malone had also a Tippecanoe choir, which, like the 
modern glee club, rendered campaign songs at home, and occasionally 
in outlying places as well. Campaign meetings were held in pretty 
much every school district in the county, and more important rallies 
in the larger villages and hamlets. At a political dinner given in 
Plattsburgh a whole hogshead of hard cider stood at the head of the 
table. So deeply stirred were the Whigs of Franklin county, and so 
sincerely convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and that theirs 
was indisputably the party of patriotism, that they seized upon the 
Fourth of July for a political demonstration, and thus assumed to make 
celebration of the national holiday distinctively a partisan affair. Pro- 
cessions came to Malone from almost every town in the county, most 
of them accompanied by bands, and the attendance was estimated at 
between three and four thousand. The procession from Bellmont and 
Chateaugay alone was estimated to be a half a mile in length, and that 
made up from Bangor, Moira, Brandon and Dickinson at over a mile. 
That from Constable, Bombay, Fort Covington and Westville was 



Franklin County Politically 101 

equally large. In each there were log cabins on wagons drawn by either 
four or six horses gaily caparisoned, and in some were laTge i 
emblazoned with flags and the names of the party candidates, while the 
Bangor contingent bad a liberty pole sixty-four feet high mounted on 
a wagon. Within the eabins or on their roofs were Live coons. Each 
division was greeted upon arrival with the booming of camion. Spi 
were made during the day, and a dinner was served on Arsenal Green. 
The campaign on the part of the Democrats was equally active, but 
without attempt at spectacular effect. 

The Campaign of 184*4 
The campaign of 1844 promised at the making of the Dominations to 
be even more demonstrative than had been that of 1840, for upon that 
occasion little was to be seen in the shops and stores in Baltimore except 
Clay portraits, banners, medals, ribbons, streamers and badges, Clay 
song books, Clay marches and quicksteps. Clay hats, Ashland coats, live 
coons and foxes. But these were not much in evidence after the cam- 
paign really opened, which nevertheless speedily became the most 
ardent and exciting that the country had ever witnessed. It was dis- 
tinctively a speaking campaign. The most eminent Whigs and the 
party's most famous orators undertook tours covering half of the 
country, and involving weeks of continuous travel and daily or nightly 
addresses. They worked as hard as the paid stump hacks of later 
years, who are indifferent to poor accommodations, fatigue and broken 
voices if only they can earn a dollar. The size and enthusiasm of the 
meetings were unparalleled. Henry Clay had been for years the leader 
and the idol of the Whigs, who held him in almost personal affection, 
but he made the mistake in the heat of the campaign, in the hope of 
placating sentiment in the South, of so modifying his position on the 
annexation of Texas as a slave State, that he antagonized the aboli- 
tionists and many of the " conscience Whigs " of the North ; and, these 
deserting him and voting for the abolition candidate, he was defeated. 
"When the result was known," Carl Schurz says in bis biography of 
Clay, "the Whigs broke out in a wail of agony all ovei the land. 'It 
was,' says Nathan Sargent, 'as if the first born of every family had 
been stricken down.' The descriptions we have of the grief manifested 
are almost incredible. Tears flowed in abundance from the eyes of 
men and women. In the cities and villages business places were almost 
deserted for a day or two, the people gathering together in groups to 



102 Histoby of Franklin County 

discuss in low tones what had happened. * * * Many despaired of 
the republic, sincerely believing that the experiment of popular govern- 
ment had failed forever." The number of abolition votes cast in 
Franklin county was eighty-six, whereas in 1840 there had not been one. 

From 1843 to 1860 political conditions locally were mixed, and elec- 
tion results usually close, with the Democrats more often in the ascend- 
ancy than the Whigs. This change from Whig to Democratic supremacy 
I suppose to have been due, first, to the great influence exercised by Silas 
Wright throughout this northern section, and, second, to the large 
influx of foreign immigration. The largest majority or plurality 
obtained by any party jn the county between 1843 and 1854 was two 
hundred and seventy-five, and in five of these years it was less than one 
hundred. In 1843 Francis D. Flanders was elected to the Assembly by 
twenty-nine majority, and was beaten for the same office in 1844 by 
twenty-six majority. The majority for Silas Wright for Governor the 
same year was only three. In 1847 the Whigs and Democrats united 
in nominating Joseph R. Flanders for county judge and William A. 
Wheeler for the Assembly, and both were elected practically without 
opposition. In 1849 and in 1850 the Democrats carried the county for 
their general ticket, but lost it on county offices. In the former year, 
S. C. F. Thorndike was elected County Clerk by only two majority, and 
in 1857 Charles Eussell had only one majority over Albert Andrus for 
member of Assembly. 

Conditions of this sort are not as conducive to the comfort and con- 
tent of the active partisan as a knowledge that sure and large 
majorities may always be counted upon ; but who shall say that they 
are not more wholesome and not calculated to promote a higher grade 
of public service ? Upon the whole, Franklin county's officials have been 
of a superior order, their average of intelligence, aptitude and integrity 
having been high, and yet is it not true that where the division of the 
people into parties is nearly equal, each party is constrained to name 
its very best men for candidates instead of passing out nominations at 
times when success is believed to be certain as rewards for mere partisan 
activity and efficiency, and without much regard for the question of 
fitness and conscientious devotion to the public welfare? 

The Democracy Disrupted 
The Democratic party was disrupted in 1847 by the slavery issue. 
For a generation it had been dominated by the pro-slavery interests, 



Franklin County Politically 103 

with their demand for the right to carry slavery into the Territories 
whether the inhabitants of these favored it or not, and Democrats who 
had tired of the South's truculent spirit, together with influential 
leaders who had private resentments to satisfy, organized a separate 
movement, and in 1847 nominated a ticket of their own in Xew York 
after having failed to control the regular party convention. In the 
next year Martin Van Buren, who had been elected President in 1836 
as the political legatee of Andrew Jackson, became the candidate of the 
free-soilers for the same office, with John A. Dix for Governor, upon a 
platform of "no more slave States, and no more slave territory," with 
the result that the Democratic division gave the election to the Whigs. 
In Franklin county the Democrats divided almost equally between the 
regulars and the free-soilers, each polling between nine hundred and 
one thousand votes. 

The leaders of the free-soilers generally were, however, without 
sincerity or abiding principle in their professions, and thus the organi- 
zation continued as a separate movement for only two or three years, 
the controlling participants in it being coaxed or bribed back into the 
regular ranks by Horatio Seymour, William L. Marcy and others upon 
terms that assigned them half of the places on the State ticket, and 
excused them from abjuring their alleged free-soil principles. They 
thus joined in fighting for the election of pro-slavery men to office, 
while " saving their face " by insisting that they expected to make the 
Democracy the great anti-slavery party of New York and the nation. 
But there was neither success nor evident effort for success in that 
direction. 

This spirit of compromise and of killing the fatted calf for 
political prodigals angered those Democrats who professed to continue 
to adhere to the original party faith, and these then engaged in revolt 
and set up an organization of their own, arguing for a strict construc- 
tion of the constitution, contending for extreme State sovereignty, and 
denying that there was any legitimate power vested anywhere to pre- 
vent a slave-owner from taking his slaves wherever he chose. There 
thus developed a strife in the party as fierce as that of a generation 
later between the Republican u half breeds " and rt stalwarts" which 
wasted the party's strength, so that its supremacy was not as unchal- 
lenged as otherwise it would have been. These factions were distin- 
guished by a variety of names, Jeffersonians, hardshells or adamantines, 
free-soilers, softshells, hunkers, barnburners and locofocoes, and they 



104 History of Franklin County 

fought without quarter. Especially interesting is the fact that the 
brothers, Joseph E. Flanders and Francis D. Flanders, who had been 
associated as leading Democratic workers and as editors of the Franklin 
Gazette, quarreled over the situation, and the former established and 
for two years edited a newspaper, called the Jeffersonian, to advocate 
his views and to fight for the cause of his faction. It was an able 
jDaper, but apparently it could not persuade a majority of Democrats- 
to follow its arguments and pleadings, as, except in 1848, the softshells- 
always polled from three to four times as many votes in the county as 
the hards. In December, 1851, having formed a law partnership in 
Kew York, Mr. Flanders removed to that city, and the publication of 
the Jeffersonian was discontinued. William B. Earle and Carlos CL 
Keeler were associated with Mr. Flanders in the ownership of the 
paper, but had no part in editing it. The publisher was "Warren Dow. 

The Knownothing Party 
In 1853 the American or Knownothing party, with its platform of 
" put none but Americans on guard,*' and political proscription of all 
citizens of foreign birth, began to be a factor in elections in this section,. 
though in some localities it had appeared as early as 183?. For a time 
it was a secret organization, each locality having its own separate 
" lodge," and the members professing ignorance concerning their asso- 
ciates and as to what was done or contemplated by the organization.. 
Hence the appellation " knownothing." In 1851 in Franklin county the 
Knownothings gave their votes generally to the Whig candidates, but 
in 1855 the party had become so formidable that it put a county ticket 
of its own in the field, and elected it by about four hundred plurality. 
George S. Adams was its candidate for county judge, Albert Hobbs for 
the Assembly, and Edgar S. Whitney for county clerk. The organiza- 
tion continued in existence for four or five years, showing in 1856 a 
strength approximating that of the Republican party. In 1857 the 
Knownothings and the Eepublicans in Franklin county agreed upon a 
union local ticket, each party taking an equal number of nominees. 
But several of the leaders among the Knownothings were dissatisfied 
with the arrangement, and, refusing to support it, the Democrats won 
by a narrow majority except on Assembly, which they lost by a single- 
vote to the fusion candidate, a Knownothing. The first man to carry 
the county as a distinctively Bepublican candidate, without any other- 
party backing, was William A. Wheeler that same year. He was the 



Fkanklin County Politically 105 

nominee for State Senator, and had fifty plurality in Franklin county. 
A fusion on a county ticket was effected again in 1858, and this time 
it was completely successful — the majorities ranging from about 80 
to 240, though by reason of the Knownothings and the Republicans 
Moving separate State tickets the Democrats obtained a plurality of 520 
on Governor. Whereas the Republican and Knownothing vote in the 
•county in 1857 had been practically equal, the former became in 1858 
twice as large as the latter — the vote having been for State officers : 
Republican, 1,621, and Knownothing, 782. 

The Knownothings nominated county candidates in 1859, but so 
hopeless was their cause seen to be that all of them withdrew, and the 
absorption of the party by the Republicans became practically com- 
plete. The result in the county on State officers in that year was 
divided, the Democrats having two majority on Secretary of State, and 
the Republicans having registered larger, but still small, majorities for 
most of the other offices. The entire Republican county ticket was 
-elected by majorities varying between twenty-five and two hundred. 
Never since then have the Democrats succeeded in electing any man to 
any county office in Franklin county. 

The only enduring consequences of the Knownothing movement were 
that through sympathy and association with it a large number of men 
who had theretofore acted uniformly with fhe Democracy passed under 
its cover to affiliation with the Republican party; and also it was 
■doubtless because of the prominence of former well known Know- 
nothings as Republican leaders that the Irish vote was bound still more 
firmly to the Democrats. Most of the Democrats who became Republi- 
cans through having first attached themselves to the Knownothings 
could not possibly have been induced to make the change directly, but 
•found transition by a side route easy and agreeable. Otherwise it is 
^extremely doubtful if Republicanism in Franklin county could so soon 
have gained ascendancy, or held it so surely and strongly. 

Political Rancor 
The foregoing reference to adherence by Irishmen to the Demo- 
cratic party makes it pertinent at this point to recall the fact that until 
about 1881 any Irishman in this section who voted the Republican 
ticket was deemed by his fellows to bave been disloyal io his race and 
Teligion, and to merit punishment — so harsh was political intolerance 
in that period. Among Republicans, though manifested in milder form 



106 History or Franklin County 

generally, a like spirit prevailed. In Number Nine of Malone, peopled 
almost altogether by Irishmen, tbere were years when any man of that 
extraction resident there who was known to be a Republican, or to have 
supported Republican candidates in a single instance, was not safe as 
to his person or property. Cases of serious assault and even of burn- 
ing buildings or of maiming animals for such offending occurred 
more than once. Conditions have changed marvelously in this regard 
within the past generation, and the Eepublican party in this county 
counts among its staunchest members a considerable percentage of 
Irishmen without their having incited any particular resentment on the 
part of other Irishmen because of their political defection. Rather 
curiously, while the Irish are so generally Democrats, the large pre- 
ponderance of the French have been Republicans. 

The Republican Party 
The Republican party had its birth July 4, 1851, at Jackson, Mich., 
as a conscience movement. The struggle for the extension of slavery 
that had persisted, now quietly and then furiously, through more than 
a third of a century, with the slavery interests repudiating solemn com- 
promise and compact over and over again, and invariably carrying their 
points, had at length inflamed public opinion in the North to the degree 
that it was ripe for uncompromising and resolute resistance to further 
aggressions looking to the imposition of slavery wherever slaveholders 
might choose to carry it into any region anywhere which had not been 
organized into States. Congress, the President and the courts were all 
subservient to the truculency of the slave power, which was united and 
defiant in its claim of constitutional rights and privileges; and withal 
sincerely convinced that it was contending only for that to which it 
was entitled, and which was vital to the prosperity of the South. Con- 
viction of necessity and that its demands were within constitutional 
guaranties were thus set on the one hand against an equal conscien- 
tiousness and an abiding devotion to righteousness on the other hand, 
together with entire persuasion that further encroachment by slavery 
must not only involve dishonor, but actually imperil the public safety. 
Soon came the famous or infamous Dred Scott decision by the supreme 
court, upholding nearly every contention that had been advanced by the 
slavery interest, and then followed the fierce struggle for determination 
of whether Kansas should come into the group of States free or slave. 
Events moved swiftly, passions were kindled to fierceness, and the 



Franklin County Politically 107 

struggle culminated in civil war through the refusal of the South in 
1860 to accept an election result that had been reached strictly within 
the forms and requirements of law and the constitution. 

The Eepublican party made its first campaign in Franklin county in 
1855, and polled one hundred and seventy-seven votes for the head of 
its ticket, Preston King, who had formerly been a prominent Democrat, 
and thus commanded some Democratic support. The candidates for 
county offices received from eighty-four to one hundred and sixteen 
votes each. This record of the beginning of the party which has never 
failed in any year since 1860 to elect its entire county ticket in Franklin 
county deserves to be preserved, and therefore the vote by towns for 
King is herewith given: Bangor 24, Bellmont 4, Bombay 12, Brandon 
1, Burke 4, Chateaugay 2, Constable 7, Dickinson 16, Duane 3, Fort 
Covington 21, Franklin 3, Harrietstown 2, Malone 52, Moira 25 and 
Westville 1. 

Intrigue and Corruption 

That tricks, intrigue and corruption in politics are not altogether of 
modern origin and employment becomes evident upon consulting news- 
paper files of the long ago. Thus the Plattsburgh Eepublican in 1818 
charged that the leaders in both parties in Franklin county had bar- 
gained the year before with Ebenezer Brownson to support him for the 
Assembly in 1818 as the price of treachery by him to his party in 1817, 
and that accordingly three men met here in 1818, as if in convention, 
and assumed to nominate him. At that time Franklin and Clinton had 
only one Assemblyman between them, and, the former voting for Mr. 
Brownson by two to one for his Republican opponent, he was elected as 
a Clintonian or Federalist, notwithstanding there was a considerable 
majority against hyn in Clinton. It is noteworthy in passing that Mr. 
Brownson was an office-holder to an extent that would not now be 
tolerated, having been first judge of the court of common pleas from 
1809 to 1814, and again from 1823 to 1825; also surrogate from 1816 
to 1828 and county clerk from 1821 to 1823, as well as member of 
Assembly in 1819. 

In the Franklin Telegraph, Malone's first newspaper, there appeared 
an item in 1824 that is really refreshing to any one who has wearied of 
the cry of " Malone ring," for it is evidence that the ring of which so 
much has been heard, and which some may have believed to be pre- 
historic, was not always existent, or at least not always dominant. In 
1824, it seems from the Telegraph's item, the popular complaint was 



108 Histoey of Fkanklin County 

against "the Fort Covington junta," and it was suggested that the 
combination so described was generally able to exercise control. But 
the real significance of the paragraph is that even ninety years ago 
there was a " machine " in politics and " bosses " and a " ring," as well 
as at present, and that the fellow who got licked was prone to howl 
about it. 

To determine when the buying of votes began I suspect that we would 
need go back to a time before the county was erected. Indefinite 
allusions in the newspapers as early as 1835 indicate very plainly that 
the practice prevailed even then to some extent, and men still living 
are able to recall here and there the names of political leaders or large 
employers of labor in different towns who were reputed to visit Malone 
always just before an election, and dicker there for the delivery in mass 
of the votes of all of the men whom they controlled, or claimed to be 
able to handle. There were allegations, too, that the federal office- 
holders practically dictated party management and the naming of can- 
didates for office in the county, as well as attended to negotiating with 
individual voters to give their ballots for a consideration, either cash 
or the promise of " recognition " or reward by way of some .appoint- 
ment or nomination to be conferred in the future. 

The Franklin Telegraph, in 1828 declared that the Jacksonians had 
sent one thousand dollars as a campaign fund into the Congressional 
district of which Franklin county was a part, and that this county 
received its share of the fund, with ten dollars over paid to Malone by 
mistake. The amount was certainly generous for that period for such 
a purpose. If the right records were accessible, I should doubtless be 
able to show that the Whigs also practiced similar methods. 

In 1853, according to both the Palladium and the Jeffersonian, the 
saloons in Malone were run openly by the softshell Democrats for 
several days preceding the election, and whiskey was free in them then, 
and also on election clay, while votes were bought by the same party in 
large numbers. One worker in an adjoining town was said to have 
received twenty-five dollars to use in getting out the vote, but applied 
it instead to purchase his supply of wheat for the winter, and did not 
even himself vote. 

In the same year disgruntled Democrats caused Democratic ballots 
to be printed on which appeared the names of some of the Whig candi- 
dates for county offices, and circulated these with advice to their friends 
to cast them. At another time the other faction of the Democrats 



Franklin County Politically 

worked the same game, with the result that the Whigs had them to 
thank for the election of a part of their local ticket. The ballots used 
in early times have since come to be known as of the " vest-pocket " 
order, each party furnishing its own and distributing them itself 
through its local committees or individual workers. Ordinarily it was 
a matter of honor with the printer who supplied them to get the names 
exactly right, and not to suffer any one outside of the office even to have 
a glimpse of them. This was the rule so that the printer for the 
opposing party should not be able to counterfeit their appearance, or 
to reproduce them so "doctored'*' that the name of a Whig candidate 
should appear in place of a Democrat, or vice versa. It would have 
been no violation of party ethics for Whigs or Democrats to attempt 
trickery of the sort indicated against each other, but for a partisan 
printing office to participate in such a fraud upon its own candidates 
was deemed disgraceful in the extreme. In Presidential years electoral 
tickets were sometimes printed with an engraved or lithographed back 
as a guard against counterfeiting. In the day of " vest-pocket '" ballots, 
too, attempts were commonly made by the workers of one party to steal 
the votes of the other or to coax them or buy them from the man to 
whom they had been intrusted for safekeeping until election day. It 
is within the recollection of the writer that one year all of the Demo- 
cratic ballots for one of the " south towns " were obtained by Kepubli- 
cans, and Democrats there had to vote the Republican ticket, write their 
own ballots, or not vote at all. 

Nor should mention be omitted that in political practices of the 
olden time in many localities (chiefly urban, and I think never in 
Franklin county) was included employment of gangs of fighting bullies 
to loiter about the polls on election day to challenge decent citizens, 
force an excuse for assaulting them, and deter them from easting their 
ballots. But naturally so high-banded and repugnant methods could 
not long endure in a free people possessing any spark of resolute spirit, 
and ballot-box stuffing and repeating were substituted as equivalent 
agents. Ballots printed on so thin paper that it was called onion 
folded into the regular ballots, would be deposited in the boxes, and 
when the excess number so introduced were drawn out and desti 
by election officers it was easy to distinguish by the "feel" of the paper 
between the onion skins and the regulars, so that only the latter were 
withdrawn, leaving the fraudulent to effect the count. Many an elec- 
tion was thus carried, though never locally. Then, or perhaps simul- 



110 History of Franklin County 

taneously with this particular form of trickery, gangs of repeaters were 
marshaled in cities to go from poll to poll and vote upon fictitious 
names that had been placed on the registry hooks for them, or upon 
the names of genuine electors. It is gratifying to be able to add that 
Franklin county never countenanced or employed this practice either. 
Sometimes, however, inability to comprehend how so large Eupub- 
lican majorities could be gained here legitimately, Democratic news- 
papers in New York city and elsewhere have charged that considerable 
numbers of Canadians were brought over the border to vote. There 
was never even a shadow of warrant for so assuming with regard to 
general elections, though I regret to be compelled to record that 
occasionally at hotly contested town meetings in some towns men who 
were not residents or even citizens have been brought out from the 
lumber camps and permitted to vote. 

Eeferring again to the unlawful use of money at elections, such use 
obtained commonly on the part of both Eepublicans and Democrats for 
many years, and was winked at, if not actually encouraged and par- 
ticipated in, by men of high character. The buying of votes here was 
most common in the years from 1876 to 1904, and if the Eepublicans 
resorted to it more than the Democrats it was solely because they were 
the more often supplied with funds, though occasionally the Demo- 
crats had the better plenished campaign chest — notably so in 1892. 
The practice began with the purchase of the votes of ignorant men who 
had no fixed political convictions, but as it grew voters of means and 
intelligence, seeing how freely funds were lavished, came to itch for a 
part, and, though this class would not bargain with Eepublicans if they 
were Democrats or vice versa, they came to insist upon their own 
respective parties paying them for " their day's time," or for the use 
of their teams on election day. The price on straight vote buying at 
ordinary elections was usually a dollar or two each, and at Presidential 
elections when interest was eager it ran at times to five or even ten 
dollars apiece. In 1892 the money so spent in Malone, or pocketed by 
workers who pretended to have spent it, was probably at least five 
thousand dollars. In 1888 the like expenditure in Chateaugay was in 
the vicinity of four thousand dollars, and correspondingly large in 
Bangor and Fort Covington. While this practice still continues, it is 
much less prevalent, the funds for prosecution of it have become smaller 
in amount, and those who engage in it operate more timidly and 
furtively. And now that women have the franchise it is likely to dis- 
appear completely. 



Franklin County Politically 111 

The Campaign of 1860 
By 1860 local Republicanism had become strong and the spirit of its 
adherents confident, resolute and eager. Thus the campaign of that 
year was one of fiery enthusiasm from its very beginning. Its most 
distinguishing feature, apart from the deep convictions that animated 
it, was the Wide-Awake organizations, which were of a semi-military 
character. The members wore black oilskin caps and capes, and carried 
pitch torches perhaps two feet long by two inches in diameter, and 
when special effects were sought each man had a roman candle or two 
to discharge as he marched, and sympathizers along the route fired 
rockets and illuminated and decorated their stores, offices and resi- 
dences. The purpose of the clubs was not merely to afford a spectacle, 
but even more to enlist the interest of young men, and make them 
zealous in missionary work during the campaign and in service on 
election day in getting out the vote, and in assuring order, freedom of 
action and fair play at the polls. The Democrats affected to see in the 
clubs a public danger and a plan to intimidate voters, and called their 
members "nigger skins." Nevertheless in many localities, though not 
in Franklin county, the Douglas faction of the Democracy organized 
similarly, but with uniforms of orange instead of black. Chateaugay 
organized the first Wide- Awake club in the county in June, and Bangor, 
Fort Covington and Malone followed quickly. The first meeting of the 
campaign was held at Malone, with intention when it was appointed 
that it should be simply a town rally at the old King's Hall; but 
interest and enthusiasm had been so kindled that the people literally 
took the affair out of the hands of the committees, and proceeded to 
manage it themselves. Ogdensburg sent announcement that its com- 
pany of Wide-Awakes would attend, and neighboring towns reported 
that their delegations and clubs also were coming, so that it was seen 
that the hall would not begin to hold the foreshadowed crowds. The 
freight depot was thereupon cleared of its contents and seating arrange- 
ments in it improvised; but not even that structure could house the 
throngs, and the meeting had to be in the open air. Thousands 
attended, including a hundred Wide-Awakes and a band from Ogdens- 
burg, and the gathering was the largest that had occurred in Malone 
since 1844. Soon afterward a like meeting at Brushton assembled 
thousands from all over the county, the number from Malone alone 
having been between 1,500 and 2,000, and a little later Malone sent a 
still larger representation to a rally at Ogdensburg. There was of 



112 Histoky of Fkanklin County 

course organized effort by committees, but upon the whole the cam- 
paign almost ran itself, and was ardent in the extreme throughout the 
summer and autumn. Men did not need to be urged to appear at the- 
polls, nor was much money required for financing the contest aside- 
from that invested in uniforms and torches or paid for bands, hall rent 
and special railway trains. The irreconcilable remnant of the Know- 
nothing party fused with the Douglas Democracy on a county ticket,, 
and the Breckinridge Democrats nominated their own candidates for 
county offices, but could not poll even twenty votes for them, though 
they cast 1,038 votes for Presidential electors. Extreme Democrats as 
the Breckinridge men had been, they yet hated the other Democratic 
faction so bitterly that a number of them afterward aligned themselves- 
with the Republicans. The Republican pluralities ranged between 664: 
and 842. 

A Union Party During the Civil Wae 

When civil war threatened disruption of the Union the Republicans,, 
though apparently able to command a majority single handed, placed 
country above party, and invited war Democrats to amalgamation with 
them in an organization that should be called the Union party, and 
whose platform should be simply a declaration for the preservation of 
the Union. As a particular evidence of their sincerity, they proposed 
to concede to Democrats one-half of the places on the county ticket, 
including the head, which went to Albert Andrus. A mass convention 
ratified the selections, and the ticket was given a majority of about 
1,350 — Chateaugay having been the only town in the county that was 
carried by the Democrats. A like arrangement continued throughout 
the duration of the war, and would probably have obtained in 1866 also- 
except that, Franklin having proposed the -nomination of Mr. Andrus- 
for State Senator, and St. Lawrence having refused to accept him, he 
became the head of a movement to organize an "Andrew Johnson 
party," with the understanding that the President had promised him 
control of federal appointments here. The movement was a good deal 
of a fiasco, and notwithstanding it and the Democracy became prac- 
tically one locally a majority of about 900 was massed against it — 
the Republicans having called themselves in the campaign Union 
Republicans, but with most of the town caucuses having been held as 
straight Republican. During each of the years of the war the Union 
party had been dominant, though in 1862, owing to the absence of so- 
many Republicans in the army and because taxes had become onerous. 



Franklin County Politically 113 

and a draft was impending, it won out by only 75 to 100 majority. The 
majority in 1861 was 1,002. 

The Eepubliean pluralities in the county in Presidential years have 
been: 

Year Plurality Year Plurality 

1860* 664 1892 2,499 

1864 1, 002 1896 3, 701 

1868 1,139 1900 3,768 

1872 1,295 1904 3,832 

1876 1,158 1908 •• 3,065 

1880 •• 1,386 1912 1,224 

1884 1,690 1916 1,497 

1888 2,729 

It is improbable that any other county in the State can parallel the 
foregoing record for Eepubliean steadfastness, with almost continu- 
ously increasing pluralities through forty-four years. The exception 
of 1876 is explained by the fact that, Mr. Wheeler having been the 
candidate for Vice-President, that master of political arts and organiza- 
tion, Mr. Tilden, directed particular effort to be made in this county 
to dissuade Democrats from giving him a complimentary vote, to bring 
every Democrat to the polls, and to secure as large a part of the pur- 
chasable electorate as could be won by a generous campaign fund. 
Still, the Eepubliean vote increased 600 over that of 1872, but the 
Democratic vote increased by a yet larger figure. Mr. Wheeler's 
plurality exceeded that given to the Eepubliean candidate for Gov- 
ernor by 75. 

The failure to increase the plurality in 1892 over that of 1888 was 
due to the wave of sentiment that swept the entire country for " a 
change," and to the fact that the Democratic campaign fund was 
inordinately large. 

No particular reason is assignable for the reduced plurality in 1908 
except perhaps that party ardor was not then quite as fervent as it 
had been, and that the personality of Mr. Taft counted for less than 
that of Mr. Eoosevelt; and the collapse in 1912 was occasioned prin- 
cipally by the great Eepubliean defection to the National Progressive 
party, which, besides taking away 1,200 or 1,300 votes directly, caused 
general demoralization. The National Progressive vote in the county 
was 1,368, of which few were drawn from the Democrats. In 1916 



* The Douglas and Breckinridge fusion in I860 was with agreement that the 
faction which should poll the larger vote would receive the votes of all the electors 
for its candidate. The Douglas vote in the county was 1,402 and the Breckinridge 
vote 1 038, so that 664 was the Republican majority instead of a pluraltly. 



114 History of Franklin County 

hundreds of Eepublicans, while still protesting adherence to their party 
in a general way, voted nevertheless for Mr. Wilson because he had 
" kept us out of war." It was one of the inexplicable mutations in 
politics that this condition should obtain to such an extent in Franklin, 
while other counties on all sides of us gave substantially their cus- 
tomary Eepublican majorities. 

Elements of Eepublican Strength 
Consideration of the causes which have influenced the people so 
largely to Eepublican affiliation here opens an interesting field for con- 
jecture. These causes have seemed to me to be in the main: (1) the 
nomination, with rare exceptions, of a high class of men, both in 
respect to ability and character, at least for the more important local 
offices; (2) the silent appeal, not at all definitely measurable, but 
surely largely potent, that was carried to the masses by the mere fact 
that so large a proportion of those eminent in business, in the profes- 
sions, in the churches, and in furthering worthy public enterprises were 
outspoken Eepublicans and active workers for their party; (3) the 
consistent and unfailing battling of the Eepublican party against the 
fads, isms and heresies which developed from time to time (including 
repudiation, greenbackism, free silver coinage, and assaults upon the 
courts), while the local Democracy temporized and flirted, and some- 
times actually got into bed, with them; (4) freedom from factionism; 
(5) accession of Irish voters, beginning in 1884, and continuing appre- 
ciably for a number of years; (6) the strong conviction, shared even by 
many Democrats, that the policy of protection comprehended more of 
benefit to the locality than that of a tariff for revenue only; (7) a 
distrust, natural on the part of countrymen, of a party dominated by 
city influences, and especially by Tammany Hall; (8) the gravitation 
by a certain type of men to the stronger party, and the realization by 
others that their only hope for political preferment lay in affiliation 
with the Eepublicans; and (9) the superior organization which the 
Eepublicans created and maintained. 

Features of Some Campaigns 
It is unnecessary and would be tedious to review campaigns year by 
year, and it must be enough merely to indicate the special features 
which characterized some of the Presidential contests, and to refer 
briefly to a few of the particularly interesting so-called off year 
elections. 



Franklin County Politically 115 

In 1868 marching organizations, called Tanners' Clubs because 
General Grant had been a tanner, were formed in a number of towns. 
The members wore uniforms and carried torches. At a parade by 
these clubs at Chateaugay the procession was stoned, and a number of 
persons were injured — one of them so seriously that he never recovered. 
A banner offered by the county committee for the largest gain by any 
town over its 1867 vote was won by Dickinson. The vote was: Repub- 
lican, 388; Democratic, 37. 

There were Tanners' Clubs again in 1872. At one stage of the cam- 
paign the inclination on the part of considerable numbers of Republi- 
cans to vote for Mr. Greeley occasioned grave forebodings, but this 
disturbing condition was offset by Democratic antipathy to the man 
who, almost more than any other, had hurled epithet and denunciation 
at that party for a generation, and in mid-October it had become so 
manifest that Republican success was assured that little further effort 
was exerted. 

In 1876 Hayes and Wheeler Clubs (many of them uniformed and known 
as Hayes and Wheeler Guards) were organized early throughout the 
county, and in most towns the roll of members equaled or exceeded the 
entire Republican vote cast by them in 1872. At the first rally of the 
campaign in Malone 300 uniformed voters joined in a parade, and for 
the final meeting there were 900. The evening parade included nearly 
1,000 actual voters, and most residences and places of business in the 
village were a blaze of light. There were no electric lamps in those 
days, and illuminations were managed by placing innumerable candles 
in windows, often with grease damage to carpets and other furnishings. 
The Bangor contingent in the procession were all mounted, and in 
every hat and from every bridle an American flag waved. The Demo- 
crats attempted a counter demonstration, but only about 500 appeared 
in their procession, many of whom were boys. Xone of them was 
uniformed. 

In 1880 several of the uniformed clubs were known as Boys in Blue, 
who were all veterans of the civil war, and numbered 350. There were 
also other uniformed organizations, known as Garfield and Arthur 
Guards and as " Company Q " of Malone. The latter was composed of 
about 150 young business men, each of whom paid for his own equip- 
ment, which consisted of white caps and capes and torches. The com- 
mittee expenditure for uniforms and torches was between $700 and 
$800. In one early parade in Malone there were 700 uniformed torch 



116 History of Franklin County 

bearers, and at the closing rally over 1,000, exclusive of a hundred 
business and professional men carrying lanterns. The route of march 
was four miles long, and by actual count more than 250 residences and 
business places were brilliantly illuminated and lavishly decorated. 
Free dinners were served at the old rink to 1,500 out-of-town visitors, 
and in the evening, before the speaking, 2,500 rations were distributed 
at Concert Hall, afterward the Malone Opera House, in Putnam Block. 

Boys in Blue and Blaine and Logan Guards, all uniformed and sup- 
plied with torches, were the spectacular feature of the campaign of 
1881. In a procession at Malone there were 700 torch-bearers, and so 
extreme was partisan rancor that the marching men were stoned and 
rotten-egged. To a meeting at Ogdensburg the county sent 500 uni- 
formed men by special train. 

In the campaign of 1888 there was a less employment of spectacular 
agencies. Fewer of the towns than had been customary had uniformed 
organizations, and where there were any at all the membership 
was small except in Chateaugay. In some localities those who par- 
ticipated in parades carried lanterns instead of torches, and the tra- 
ditional log cabin, which was so marked a feature of the 1810 cam- 
paign, again appeared. Chateaugay had one which was a gem pf its 
kind. The campaign was stirring and excellently organized, and it 
was in this year that the famous' Morton Glee Club of Malone made its 
brilliant reputation. It appeared not only at many rallies throughout 
Franklin county, but also in other parts of the State generally — 
having been drafted into service in connection with the meetings which 
were addressed by the candidate for Governor. It was pronounced 
everywhere to be the finest glee club in the State. 

The campaign of 1888 was the last in which uniformed organizations 
appeared, though there was one parade in Malone in 1892 of business 
men carrying lanterns shaped like the a Harrison hat." One of the 
1810 methods was revived in this year, and speakers toured the northern 
towns of the county in a tally-ho coach drawn by four horses. The 
effect was not altogether satisfactory. 

In 1896 the Bepublicans seized upon the American flag as their 
distinctive party emblem, and never were the national colors so pro- 
fusely displayed. Such use of the flag has since been prohibited by law. 
The mad vagaries of Mr. Bryan excited alarm in business circles, and 
not a few lifelong Democrats aligned themselves openly with the 
Bepublicans, and others voted with them quietly. 



Feanklin Couxty Politically 117 

The campaigns of 1900, 1901 and l'.ius vrere without marked inci- 
dents or characteristics other than the intense interest v. baeh animated 
them. 

The first noteworthy off-year contest after the civil war was in 1878, 
when the Greenback craze fastened upon so many minds. It stood for 
an unlimited issue of paper money as a legal tender, with the pre- 
tense that the mere fiat of government could give to an irredeemable 
promise to pay an equal stability and purchasing power with 
that of a currency based upon coin of intrinsic value. It 
seemed likely at first to sweep a great mass of voters, especially those 
who were in debt, into its current. Greenback clubs were formed, and 
there was confident prediction that the new party would carry the 
county. The Eepublicans fought the movement strenuously by argu- 
ment, and the Democrats toyed with it, even making some of its count}' 
nominees their own. The Greenbackers polled about 250 votes for 
their State ticket, and the Eepublican pluralities ranged between 1,500 
and 1,800, which were larger than had ever before been registered. 

A deplorable and melancholy event occurred in 1881. Major William 
D. Brennan was serving his third term in the Assembly, and William A. 
"Wheeler was a candidate for United States Senator. The opposition 
to the latter was anxious that the nomination should precede the 
annoitncement of the Assembly committees, which were to be named by 
an anti-Wheeler Speaker, and it was assumed that inasmuch as some 
of the assignments were sure to be disappointing, the effect would be 
favorable to Mr. "Wheeler. It was necessary to secure a given number 
of signatures to the call for the nominating caucus, and Major Brennan 
was persuaded to become one of the signers. His justification of him- 
self was that the required number was certain to be obtained without 
him, and that he would be unnecessarily and unwisely antagonizing tbe 
majority by standing out against an early caucus. But it was imme- 
diately charged openly at Albany that he had " sold out," and Mr. 
Wheeler and his friends recognized that if he had ever had any chance 
for election it had been lost. Then Major Brennan was appointed to 
the most important Assembly chairmanship, and it was flung at him 
that the assignment was his reward for having joined in the caucus call. 
There was correspondence between Major Brennan and ^Ir. Wheeler on 
the subject, and the former at once became depressed and morbid. 
Mr. Wheeler's active interest and somewhat high-handed intervention 
with delegates to the countv convention in 1879 bad alone brought aboul 



118 History of Franklin County 

Major Brennan's first nomination, and the closest and most affectionate 
relations had long subsisted between the two. Major Brennan talked 
freely about a " cruel letter " written to him by Mr. Wheeler, which he 
said had robbed him of ability to sleep and had broken his heart. He 
induced Frederick D. Kilburn to visit Albany for inquiry into the 
facts, and then to proceed to Washington to undertake to effect a recon- 
ciliation with Mr. Wheeler. The result of Mr. Kilburn's mission was 
not satisfactory to Major Brennan, whose nervous and depressed con- 
dition became worse, compelling a relinquishment of his legislative 
duties, and in March he committed suicide. Mr. Wheeler's letter to 
Major Brennan was never exhibited by the latter except possibly to 
one or two persons, and Mr. Wheeler, while admitting that it was cold 
and formal, denied that it contained anything " cruel." A £opy of it 
which he showed me bore out that description. No one who knew 
Major Brennan could possibly believe that he ever intended, or even 
realized until too late, that in signing the caucus call he would injure 
Mr. Wheeler's interests, and his action was undoubtedly simply an 
error of judgment. 

A New Ballot Law 
Until 1890 each party had always supplied and distributed its own 
ballots, and a trusted voter could obtain one in advance and mark it tc* 
his liking at home. But in 1890 a law was passed providing for an 
official ballot, which could be had only at the polls from an election 
officer, and might not be taken elsewhere for alteration or consideration. 
These ballots were of as many kinds as there were separate parties, were 
uniform in appearance, and were each about five by seven inches in 
size. The use of pasters on them was permissible. The new law com- 
pelled an increase in the number of election districts, which, added to 
the cost of the ballots, and other new requirements, increased the expense 
of elections greatly. This form of ballot was continued until 1896, and 
in 1894 there were so many sets of candidates and so many propositions 
to be voted upon that seventeen separate ballots had to be handed by 
the election officers to each voter. The so-called blanket ballot first 
came into use in 1896. On it there were as many distinct columns as 
there were parties with nominations in the field, and each party had 
its own column, distinguished by its chosen emblem for the benefit of 
the illiterate. At the top of each column below the party emblem was 
a circle. A cross (X) mark in any circle meant a vote for every one 
of the candidates in such column unless the voter chose also to make 



Franklin County Politically 119 

a cross mark opposite the name of particular candidates in another 
column, in which case he voted what was called a " split " ticket — the 
mark within the circle giving his vote to everybody in the column except 
for the offices as to which marks had been made in other columns. 
Since probably eighty to ninety per cent, of the entire electorate ordi- 
narily vote " straight " party tickets, this form of ballot undoubtedly 
accommodated the large majority better than any other; but it is the fad 
of a few that independent or discriminating voting ought to be encour- 
aged, and accordingly the form of ballot was changed in 1914 so that 
the names of all candidates for any given office are grouped together; 
and now every elector must make as many separate cross marks as 
there may be candidates whom he desires to support. Thus a longer 
time is required by every voter for marking his ballot, and the election 
officers must spend more time in making the count. With the blanket 
ballot restored, the election districts need not be as many, nor would 
it be as difficult to induce capable men to serve as election officers. Is 
it right that public expense be unnecessarily increased, and four-fifths 
or more of the people inconvenienced in voting merely to satisfy the 
notions of a few goody-goodies or theorists ? We ought to return to the 
use of the blanket ballot. 

With the exception of the campaign of 1836, when the Democratic 
nominee for Congress was charged with smuggling, subornation of per- 
jury, perjury on his own part, counterfeiting, and attempting to defraud 
the United States treasury, the campaign of 1891 has had no parallel in 
Franklin county politics. Allen S. Matthews of Fort Covington, the 
Republican candidate for the Assembly, was publicly accused of having 
burned his storehouse when it was practically empty, and of then having 
attempted to collect insurance on a considerable quantity of wool claimed 
to have been in it. The matter was considered in an informal confer- 
ence of many of the leading Republicans of the county, strong evidence 
was gathered in disproof of the charge, and the campaign fought out 
vigorously. Mr. Matthews was elected by 1,368 plurality. 

" Dandelions " and " Snowshoers " 

There was a bitter and fierce Democratic quarrel in 1893, when the 
local Cleveland and Hill factions fought each other for party control 
as " Dandelions " and " Snowshoers " — so designated because the 
former had wished in 1892 that the delegates to the national convention 
should be chosen at a late date, and the latter that they be named in 



120 History of Franklin County 

February. In Franklin county most of the men who for a generation 
had been rej^resentative of the best Democratic character, and had kept 
the party intact and alive through difficulties and discouragements;, were 
with Hill, while the Cleveland forces were mostly of the younger class, 
ambitious to gain office and party control. The delegates to the county 
•convention in 1893 were nearly equally divided between the two fac- 
tions, each of which attempted to organize the body in its own interest. 
Two sets of officers were placed in nomination, and upon a vote 
each crowd claimed a majority. Two chairmen undertook to preside, 
and a hot knockout fight resulted, with a number of the delegates par- 
ticipating — both factions having foreseen some such development, and 
in anticipation of it having included among their delegates men of 
pugilistic prowess. Finally each set of delegates proceeded to act 
separately, and each named a ticket. The courts sustained the Hill 
body as regular, and, deprived of the privilege of having their own 
candidates on the official ballot, the Cleveland crowd voted generally 
for both the State and county Eepublican tickets. The Eepublican 
plurality that year, notwithstanding the campaign was one of great 
apath} r , was 2,275. The Cleveland element had a further revenge later, 
Avhen it was permitted by the President to control the distribution of 
the federal offices in the county. 

Republican pluralities in off years after 1888 were often in excess 
■of 2,000, and once reached 3,000 ; but also they occasionally dropped to 
600 or 800. Never since 1858 have the Democrats elected a single 
candidate to any county office. The largest Eepublican vote, 6,700, ever 
polled in the county was in 1901. 

In 1887 an unfortunate Republican schism arose from the peculiar 
action of the convention in nominating a candidate for school commis- 
sioner for the district comprising the western and northern towns of 
the county. There had been sharp contests in the town caucuses, and it 
was indisputable that on a clear-cut issue a majority of delegates favor- 
able to the nomination of Almanzo Hutchins of Brandon had been 
chosen. But either some delegate was bribed or inadvertently voted 
contrary to what were virtually the instructions of his caucus, and a 
ballot gave William G. Cushman of Fort Covington a majority. 'A 
motion to reconsider was carried, and on a second ballot the delegates 
all voted in accordance with the intentions of their respective caucuses, 
and Mr. Hutchins was declared the nominee. Mr. Cushman then 
entered the field independently, but with the claim that, having received 



Franklin County Politically 121 

a majority vote in the convention on the first ballot, he was in fact the 
regular party nominee, and that the convention had neither the right 
nor the power to take a second ballot. No campaign in the count 
aroused more interest or developed greater bitterness. Mr. Ctffihman 
was elected by a large plurality. In 1893 Mr. lint eh ins was again nom- 
inated for the office, over Willard Hyde of Bangor, who became an inde- 
pendent candidate without any claim that he had not been fairly 
defeated in the convention, but urging that his circiimstam ses and hia 
health justified his course. The animosities of 1887 were revived, 
pathy for Mr. Hyde was widespread and potent, and Mr. Hutching was 
again beaten. 

Malone's Glee Club 
In a number of Presidential campaigns Malone had a Republican 
glee club of exceptional merit. The voices were snperior both in nat- 
ural quality and cultivation, and the songs, set to eatehy and stirring 
tunes, abounded in clever and witty passages. No feature of a political 
meeting was more popular or contributed more to its success. In 1888 
this organization gained a Statewide reputation, having appeared at the 
State convention, and having also toured the State with the candidate 
for Governor. Captain William H. Barney, Dr. Floyd L. Danforth, 
Lensie L. Sayles and Frank L. Channell were a great quartet, and 
rendered their party a magnificent service. Incidentally, three of them 
sung themselves into public office. 

Caucus Systems and Practices 
A reference to caucus or primary systems and practices must con- 
clude this chapter. Until 1870 or a little later caucuses in Franklin 
county seldom or never reflected any well defined popular sentiment 
or preferences as between aspirants for office. In the years after 1860 
the hopelessness of Democratic success at the polls served always to 
deter men of that political faith from seeking nominations, so that 
there was never incentive to strife in that party in this regard, and its 
caucuses were thus always perfunctory and merely a form for preserva- 
tion of organization. The Republicans appeared in these years to be 
willing generally that the selection of candidates be made practically 
by a single individual, Mr. "Wheeler, who, communicating his wishes 
and plans to customs officers, postmasters and close personal friends in 
the several towns, was sure to have delegates commissioned to county 
conventions who were altogether disposed to act as he might advise. 



122 History of Franklin County 

The caucuses were seldom attended except by the few who were Mr. 
Wheeler's agents and by perhaps a handful of others whom these invited 
to be present, while in Brighton, Duane, Franklin and Harrietstown 
the practice of holding caucuses at all did not prevail until years later. 
The general course in the towns named, even until about 1880, was that 
some leading and active Eepublican would assume of his own initiative 
and without authority to arrange with three men in each town to go to 
a convention as delegates on credentials which he himself would pre- 
pare. Often such pseudo delegates would vote in the convention as a 
body, and for the candidates recommended by their leader, who, in 
turn, was controlled by some one person or small group of persons in 
Malone. Justice requires that it be added that in the exercise of his 
autocratic power Mr. Wheeler usually studied to meet popular wishes 
so far as these were evident, and that his nominees should be men of 
ability and character, whose party record entitled them to recognition 
and reward. Otherwise he could hardly have maintained his control. 
In the old-style convention each town had equal representation and vot- 
ing power. Soon after 1870 it became the custom for individuals to 
put themselves forward for office, with direct appeal to the voters for 
support, but never failing to attempt to enlist the backing ^f the 
" machine " also, and the town caucuses often became animated gather- 
ings of considerable numbers, registering their preferences as between 
rival contenders for their favor either by a vote of instructions to the 
delegates, or by making choice of men representing a particular candi- 
date over the set who stood for his competitor. In a number of spirited 
canvasses in the eighties and nineties even more votes than the usual 
Eepublican poll at an election were cast in some of the caucuses. 

In 1911 a law was enacted which substituted official primary elec- 
tions for the caucus and convention system, which had been operated at 
individual and party expense, and with no rules except such as custom 
or occasionally organization decree had established. The official primary 
is wholly under official control, with public officers presiding at them, 
and with ballots and all other supplies and expenses paid for by taxa- 
tion. The theory of the new scheme was that it would make party 
<e machines " and " bosses " less powerful, and lodge control absolutely 
with the people. The intention was admirable, but in practice the 
expected results have not been realized, perhaps because no occasion 
has arisen since 1911 for a genuinely spontaneous assertion of the popu- 
lar will ; and the party workers have had their way quite as surely and 



Fkanklin County Politically 123 

with as little difficulty as formerly. Not improbably still another reason 
for the partial failure of the official primary election may be found in 
the fact that in order to participate in it enrollment has to be made 
nearly a year in advance, a requirement which in principle resembles 
personal registration, always operative to make the vote light at an 
-election. Yet further, the mass of enrolled voters are those who are 
party workers and committee members, and through these the word 
often passes from "higher up" that the leaders and the organization 
stand for this or that candidate, who accordingly gets the votes. Doubt- 
less a principal influence toward making the law unpopular is the 
expense that attaches to it. Until 1918 that expense in Franklin county 
was over $2,300 per year, whereas the old caucus and convention plan 
cost taxpayers nothing, since the candidates for nomination or the party 
organizations paid all of the bills. An amendment made to the law in 
1918 reduces the cost for its annual administration locally by 
about $500. 

The old system of caucuses and conventions was by no means without 
its faults, the chief of which were its concession to a town of, say, fifty 
voters the same representation and voice in determining nominations 
that were given to one with ten or twenty times that number of electors, 
and the practice of voting in a convention by secret ballot, which car- 
ried opportunity for betrayal by a delegate of his constituency. Eequire 
that all caucuses be called upon ample public notice; that the chair- 
man, secretary and tellers be sworn to an honest discharge of their 
respective duties; and that all voting in a convention be upon roll-call, 
with each delegate declaring openly his attitude upon any question or 
candidacy; and the system would have much to commend it. First, 
experience points to the fact that a wider and more popular interest is 
awakened under it. Second, it would bring men together from all 
parts of the county for interchange of views, and for informing each 
other concerning public sentiment in the different towns. Third, it 
would promote acquaintance of the leaders of thought with each other, 
which is assuredly desirable. Fourth, it would provide a method for 
authoritative declaration of a crystallized public sentiment. And, fifth, 
it would inspire among convention delegates and spectators alike a 
quickened and broader interest in public questions and in party policies. 
Though there is doubtless an element that decries the desirability of 
the last specified condition, the fact nevertheless abides that our govern- 
ment is through parties, and, therefore, it follows that the stronger 



124 Histoey of Feanklin County 

allegiance to a party, based upon intelligence and conscience, the better 
and more responsive to the popular will an administration is likely to 
prove. 

Franklin County Men \Yiio Have Held Public Office 
Lists of the Franklin county men who have filled the more important 
local offices, or held higher positions in the State or national civil 
service, are appended. Where men are classified in years earlier than 
1830 as Republican it is to be remembered that the description is prac- 
tically equivalent to Democratic, which name did not come into use in 
New York until about 1830. 

Vice-President 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1876 William A. Wheeler Republican Malone 

Presidential Electors 

1828 James Campbell Federalist Fort Covington 

1832 James B. Spencer Democratic Fort Covington 

1864 Hiram Horton Republican Malone 

1868 Francis D. Flanders. Democratic Malone 

1884 William F. Creed Democratic Malone 

1000 William T. O'Neil Republican Waverly 

1912 Oscar L. Chapin Democratic Malone 

Lieutenant-Governor 

1838-1840 Luther Bradish Whig Moira 

Mr. Bradish was defeated for Governor in 1812. 
State Superintendent of Banks 

1896-99-1902-05 Frederick D. Kilburn Republican Malone 

1883 William F. Creed (demity) . . . Democratic Malone 

1908-1911 Frederick J. Seaver (deputy). . Republican Malone 

Delegates to Constitutional Conventions 

1846 Joseph R. Flanders Democratic Malone 

1867 William A. Wheeler Republican Malone 

1867 Toe! J. Seaver Republican Malone 

1893 John I. Gilbert Republican Malone 

1915 Ferris J. Meigs Republican Altamont 

Deputy Conservation Commissioner 

1917 '. Alexander Macdonald Republican Waverly 

Representatives in Congress 

1830 William Hogan Democratic Hogansburgh 

1836 James B. Spencer Democratic Fc/rt Covington 

1846 Sidney Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1860 William A. Wheeler Republican Malone 

1868-70-72-74. William A. Wheeler Republican Malone 

1886-88 John H. Moffitt Republican Bellmont 

1904-06 William H. Flack* Republican Malo 



* Died in office. 



Franklin County Politically 125 

State Senators 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1822 David Erwin Republican Constable 

1843 Sidney Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1851 Henry B. Smith Democratic Chateaugay 

1857 William A. Wheeler Republican Maloue 

1863 Albert Hobbs Republican Malone 

1871-73 Wells S. Dickinson Republican Bangor 

1883 John I. Gilbert Republican M 

1891 Frederick D. Kilburn Republican Malone 

190S-10 William T. O'Neil* Republican Waverly 

1910-12 Herbert P. Coats Republican Harrietstown 

1914-16 N. Monroe Marshall Republican Maloue 

* Died in office. 

Members of Assembly 
Until 1822 Franklin and Clinton comities comprised one Assembly 
district, during which time Franklin county furnished the member five 
times. 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Pol; Residence 

1809-11 Gates Hoit Republican Chateaugay 

1817 Gates Hoit Republican Chateaugay 

1818 Ebenezer Brownson Federalist Malone 

1822 William Hogan Republican Hogansburgh 

1823 George B. R. Gove Clintonian-Federalist Fori ( lovington 

1824-25 Asa Hascall Federalist Malone 

1826 James Campbell Federalist Fort Covington 

1827-29 Luther Bradish Anti-Masonic M 

1830-31 lames B. Spencer Democratic Fort Covington 

1832-33 JabeJ Parkhurst Whig Fort Covington 

1834 Asa Hascall Whig Malone 

1835-36-37 Luther Bradish Whig Moira 

1838 Asa Hascall Whig Malone 

1839-40 John S. Eldredge Whig Hogan<bur»-h 

1841 Thomas R. Powell Whig Maloue 

1842 Joseph H. Jackson Whig Ma 

1843 Francis D. Flanders Democratic Malone 

1844 Hiram Horton Whig Malone 

1845 Sidney Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1846 Joseph R. Flanders Democratic Malone 

1847 Elos L. Window Democratic Ma 

1848 George B. R. Gove Whig Fort Covington 

1849-50 William A. Wheeler Whig Malone 

1851-52 Darius W. Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1853 Andrew W. Ferguson Democratic Ma 

1854 Edward Fitch Whig 

1855 Albert Hobbs Knownothing Mai 

1856 George Mott Democratic Bangor 

1857 Charles Russell Knownothing-Republiean . . Mo 

1858 Martin L. Parlin Knownothing-Republiean . . Malone 

1859 Wells S. Dickinson Republican Ban or 

1860 William Andrus Republican Ma 

1861-63. Albert Andrus Union party Malone 

1864—66 James W. Kimball Republican Fort Covington 

1867-68 Edmund F. Sargent Republican Bangor 

1869-71 James H. Pierce Republican Franklin 

1872-74 John P. Badger Republican Bu 

1875-77 John I. Gilbert Republican M 

1878-80 William D. Brennan Republican Ma 

1880 Samuel A. Beman Republican Malone 

1881-84 William T. O'Neil. . Republican \\ , 

1885-87 Flovd J. Hadley Republican Westville 

1888-90 William C. Stevens Republican Mai 

1891-93 Allen S. Matthews Republican Fort Covington 

1894-98 Thomas A. Sears Republican Bir 

1899-1902 Halbert D. Stevens Republican Mai 

1903-06 Charles R. Matthews Republican Bombay 

1907-08 Harry H. Hawley Republican Malone 

1909-14 Alexander Macdonald Republican Waverly 

1915-17 Warren T. Thayer Republican Chateaugay 

Luther Bradish was Speaker of the Assembly in 1838, tbe only 
Franklin county man who ever held tbe office. Indeed, ibis county has 



126 History of Franklin County 

never even had a candidate for the Speakership with the exceptions of 
Mr. Bradish, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. O'Neil and Mr. Macdonald. 

Surrogates 
Surrogates were appointive by the Governor and Council, or by the 
Governor and Senate, until 1847, when the duties of the office in 
Franklin county were devolved upon the county judge. 

Year of 
appointment 

or election Name Politics Residence 

1808 Joshua Nichols Republican Malone 

1814 Albon Man Federalist Constable 

1816 Ebenezer Brownson Republican Malone 

1823 James B. Spencer Republican Fort Covington 

1837 Sidney Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1843 Martin L. Parlin Democratic Malone 

County Judges 
Courts of common pleas preceded the county court, which was created 
in 1847. The first judges of the court of common pleas and the county 
judges have been: 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1809 Ebenezer Brownson Republican Malone 

1814 George L. Harison Federalist Malone 

1815 Joshua Nichols Republican Malone » 

1816 Albon Man . . Federalist Constable 

1820 Hiram Horton Federalist Malone 

1823 Ebenezer Brownson Republican Malone 

1825 Benjamin Clark Republican Malone 

1829 William Hogan Republican Hogansburgh 

1837 Roswell Bates Democratic Fort Covington 

1843 Henry B. Smith Democratic Chateaugay 

1847 Joseph R. Flanders Democratic Malone 

1851 John Hutton Democratic Malone 

1855 George S. Adams Knownothing Malone 

1859-63 Henry A. Paddock Republican Fort Covington 

1867-71 Albert Hobbs Republican Malone 

1877-83 Horace A. Taylor Republican Malone 

18S9-95-1901. . Samuel A. Beman Republican Malone 

1907-13 Frederick G. Paddock Republican Malone 

District Attorneys 
It was not until 1818 that each county had a district attorney, and 
not until 1847 was the office made elective. Before that district attor- 
neys were appointive by the courts. 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1818 Asa Hascall Federalist Malone 

1841 . . . Joseph H. Jackson Whig Malone 

1843 Asa Hascall Whig Malone 

1847 . . . William A. Wheeler Whig Malone 

1850 Ashbel B. Parmelee Whig Malone 

1853 . . . Henry A. Paddock Democratic Fort Covington 

1856 Walter H. Payne Democratic Fort Covington 

1859 Albon Man Republican Malone 

1862-65 Horace A. Taylor Republican Malone 

1868-74 Samuel A. Beman Republican Malone 

1877-80 John P. Badger Republican Malone 

1883-89 Henry G. Kilburn Republican Malone 

1892-95 Frederick G. Paddock Republican Malone 

1898-1904 Gordon H. Main Republican Malone 

1907-13 • • • John W. Genaway Republican Malone 

1916 Ellsworth C. Lawrence Republican Malone 



Franklin County Politically 127 

County Clerks 
County clerks were appointive by the Governor and Council until 
1822, when they were made elective by the people. 

Year of 

appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1S08 James S. Allen Republican Chateaugay (Burke) 

3,809 Gates Hoit Republican Chateaugay 

1811 Asa Wheeler Republican Malone 

1813 Gates Hoit Republican Chateaugay 

1815 Asa Wheeler Republican Malone 

1821 Ebenezer Brownson Republican Malone 

1822 Asa Wheeler Republican Malone 

1825 George B. R. Gove Clintonian Fort Covington 

1828 AbelWillson Federalist Malone 

1831 Samuel S. Clark Democratic Malone 

1834-40 Uriah D. Meeker Whig Fort Covington 

1843 Lauriston Amsden Democratic Malone 

1846 Henry S. Brewster Democratic Malone 

1849 Samuel C. F. Thorndike Whig Malone 

1852 Francis D. Flanders Democratic. Malone 

1855-58 Edgar S. Whitney Knownothing Fort Covington 

1861 Uriah D. Meeker* Republican Malone 

1861-64 Claudius Hutchins Republican Dickinson 

1867-70 William W. Paddock Republican Constable 

1873-76 Almerin W. Merrick Republican Fort Covington 

1879-82 George W. Dustin Republican Dickinson 

1885-88 N. Monroe Marshall Republican Bellmont 

1891-94 Frank S. Channell Republican Malone 

1897-1900 William H. Flack Republican Waverly 

1903-06 Harvey J. Dudley Republican Constable 

1909-12 Harry H. Hawley Republican Malone 

1915 F. Roy Kirk Republican Malone 

* Appointed vice Whitney, deceased. 

Sheriffs 
Sheriffs were appointive by the Governor and Council until 1822, 
since when they have been elective. The office was formerly so influen- 
tial and powerful that it was felt that an incumbent of it could force 
his re-election indefinitely if he were permitted to hold consecutive 
terms, and therefore a sheriff has always been ineligible for re-election. 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1808 John Wood Republican Malone 

1812 Lemuel Chapman Republican Malone 

1814 Zerubabel Curtis Federalist Malone 

1815 : James Campbell Republican Fort Covington 

1818 John Wood Clintonian Malone 

1822 John Mitchell Republican Chateaugay (Burke) 

1823 John Mitchell Republican Chateaugay (Burke) 

1825 Reeve Peck Clintonian Malone 

1828 John Backus Federalist Constable 

1830. Oren Lawrence Democratic Moira 

1833 Aaron Beman Whig Malone 

1836 Guy Meigs Democratic Malone 

1839 William Andrus Whig Malone 

1842 Loyal C. Lathrop Democratic Malone 

1845 Benjamin W. Clark Democratic Malone 

1848 Rufus R. Stephens Whig Hogansburgh 

1851 James C. Drake Democratic Bangor 

1854 Jame3 C. Sawyer Democratic Fort Covington 

1857 George H. Stevens Democratic Bangor 

1860 Daniel F. Soper Republican Chateaugay 

1863 George G. Gurley Republican Chateaugay 

1866 Robert A. Delong Republican Malone 

1869 William H. Hyde Republican Ban"m 

1872 Robert A. Delong Republican Ma 

1875 fames A. Stockwell Republican Westville 

1878 Lyman J. Folsom Republican Malone 



128 History of Franklin County 

Sheriffs — Continued 

Year of 
appointment 

or election Name Politics Residence 

1881 James A. Stockwell Republican Malone 

1884 Lyman J. Folsom Republican Malone 

1887 George W. Sunderland* Democratic Malone 

1887 George W. Dustin Republican Moira 

1890 Fred P. Wilson Republican Bangor 

1893 Edward F. Rowley Republican Westville 

1896 Edgar A. Whitney Republican Moira 

1899 Erne3t A. Douglass Republican Chateaugay 

1902 Frank S. Steenberge Republican Bangor 

1905 George S. Henry Republican Fort Covington 

1908 Frank S. Steenberge Republican Bangor 

1911 Alfred A. Edwards Republican Malone 

1914 Frank S. Steenberge Republican Bangor 

1917 Alfred A. Edwards Republican Malone 



* Appointed in place of Folsom, deceased 

County Treasurers 

County treasurers were appointive by boards of supervisors until 
1847, when they were made elective by the people. The record shows 
that under the first practice incumbents usually enjoyed long terms of 
service. 

Year of 
appointment 
or election Name Politics Residence 

1808 Nathan Wood Federalist Malone 

1810 Hiram Horton, Sr Federalist Malone 

1821 Jacob Wead Federalist Malone 

1837 Samuel Clark Wead Whig Malone 

1843 Samuel S. Clark Democratic Malone 

1848 Samuel Clark Wead Whig Malone 

1851 William Wallace King Democratic Malone 

1854 S. M. Weed Democratic Malone 

1857 B. S. W. Clark Democratic Malone 

1860-63 William G. Dickinson Republican Malone 

1866-72 William D. Brennan Republican Malone 

1875-78 Daniel H. Stanton Republican Malone 

1881-84 Frederick D. Kilburn Republican Malone 

1887-90 Fred O'Neil Republican Duane 

1893-98 Edwin R. Tower Republican Brandon 

1897-1900 Thomas Adams Republican Malone 

1903-06 Orren S. Lawrence Republican Malone 

1909 Frank L. Carpenter Republican Bellmont 

1910-13 Berton L. Reynolds* Republican Brandon 

1916 James A. Latour Republican Harrietstown 



* Appointed vice Carpenter, deceased, and afterward elected. 



CHAPTER IV 
ALTAMONT 

Altamont was formed from Waverly in 1890, and comprises three 
townships, or 76,168 assessed acres. In 1913 a strip one mile wide by 
five miles long was added from St. Lawrence county in furtherance of 
a highway policy for the construction of a road designed to give Tupper 
Lake an outlet to eastern and central New York points, but which 
St. Lawrence was unwilling to aid in building. The strip in question 
has no inhabitants. 

The population of Altamont in 1892, at the first enumeration follow- 
ing its erection as a town, was 1,051, which increased in eight years to 
3,045, and in the next ensuing five years to 4,843; but, owing to the 
closing of some of the manufacturing plants and to curtailment of 
operations by others, it decreased to 4,691 in 1910 and further to 4,480 
in 1915, of whom 703 were aliens. The aliens are becoming fewer, how- 
ever, as over 200 of them filed applications for naturalization during 
the summer of 1917. The population is now increasing, and it is 
expected that within a short time the losses above noted will be fully 
recovered. 

AltamomVs principal waters are a part of Big Tupper lake, Raquette 
pond, Big and Little Simons ponds, Lake Madeleine in Litchfield Park 
(formerly called Jenkins pond), and Baquette river. The latter, having 
its source in Hamilton county, flows half way across the town from 
east to west into Big Tupper lake, near the foot of that water, and, 
continuing as its outlet, courses north and thence west into St. Law- 
rence county. There is no other considerable stream in the town, nor 
has any good water power ever been utilized there. Raquette pond is 
simply an expansion of the river, caused by the reservoir dam, which 
was erected by Potsdam lumber interests in 1870. These interests had 
experienced difficulty in making clean runs of their logs down the river, 
and had been inconvenienced also by low water in operating their mills. 
They accordingly united in erecting the reservoir at a point known as 
Setting Pole Rapids, three or four miles west of where Faust now is. 

[129] 
5 



130 Histoey of Franklin County 

There was no mill in the vicinity, and all of the timbers that went into 
the structure had to be hand hewed. These were mostly twelve by fourteen 
inches, and two hundred acres were stripped of all the trees that would 
square to that size. Including the wings, the dam was 300 feet long, 
and had ten gates. Its height was ten feet above still water, and 38,000 
cubic feet of stone went into it. The result was the flooding of lands 
for a distance of nearly thirty miles up the river and the lake, varying 
in width as the high land on either side met the bottoms. At one 
point on the lake the width was about two miles. Of course all of the 
fine timber lining the shores was killed, transforming a beautiful section 
into a dead forest indescribably desolate in appearance. The dam broke 
in May, 1871, and the flood was thirty-six hours in reaching Potsdam, 
where it wrought great havoc. The dam was repaired in 1872, but in 
anger because it was believed to injure the fishing, and also because 
it was thought that with a recession of the waters meadows could be 
established along the tract that had been flooded, men from the vicinity 
of Moody cut away parts of the structure in 1885, and dynamite after- 
ward lowered it still further. The land where Faust is was at one time 
wholly under water by reason of the existence of the dam, as also was 
a considerable part of the upper section of the village known asTupper 
Lake. As the locality became more settled, a great deal of the dead 
timber was cut by residents for fuel, and more of it by the lumber 
companies in order to improve navigation for their steamboats and 
scows, so that now much of the former repellent aspect has disappeared. 
Owners of water powers down the river now plan to reconstruct the old 
dam, though not to its former height, so as to regulate the river's sum- 
mer flow; and the town of Altamont has appropriated $3,500 for 
expenditure in connection with this project for payment of flowage dam- 
ages. The restoration of the dam is expected to cause a disappearance 
of sloughs above it and by holding the water at nearly a uniform level 
greatly better sanitary conditions. Incidentally it should be noted that 
as early as 1850 the State appropriated ten thousand dollars for the 
improvement of the upper Eaquette for the benefit of Potsdam lumber- 
men. A part of the fund went into the building of a small dam at 
Setting Pole Rapids. 

In the southern section of Altamont especially, and to a less degree 
in the northern part, the surface is broken by mountains and ridges, 
while in the central portion there is considerable marsh land. Before 
the reservoir was built nearly the entire town had been covered with a 



Altamont 131 

magnificent forest of both hard and soft timber, and this condition still 
prevails in many localities, most of the area still remaining a wilder- 
ness. It is, however, the fact that the big mills have taken heavy tolls 
from the forests during the past quarter of a century, and that lire has 
ravaged large areas. There is hardly a year without some destruction 
by fire, and sometimes the losses so caused are stupendous. In the mem- 
orable dry summer of 1903 the tax alone simply for fighting such fires 
in Altamont was $3,858.44, and individual concerns claimed to have 
themselves expended no less than $14,000 additional in protecting their 
own tracts. What the actual property losses aggregated no one can say 
with anything like precision, but unquestionably they were enormous. 
For illustration, a single owner claimed damages to the amount of 
one hundred thousand dollars, though his recovery was for a much 
smaller sum. 

The " great windfall of 1845 " stretches across the central part of 
the north third of the town, and, until fire followed, the devastation 
wrought by it visualized what must have been the most terrific storm 
that ever touched Northern New York. It developed on the Grasse river 
in St. Lawrence county, and forked at about the Franklin county line, 
one arm sweeping straight across township nineteen, and the other pass- 
ing to the north of where Derrick now is. Its path was from a half 
mile to a mile in width, and it is told that not a single tree was left 
standing in its track. All were snapped off or uprooted, with a result- 
ant tangle of trunks and limbs and tops that was impenetrable. The 
hunters of the time had had trails across the tract, and, desiring to con- 
tinue them, set fire to the slash. Ten years or such a matter afterward, 
when Cyrus P. Whitney, the surveyor, first saw the locality, on a hunt- 
ing trip, these fires had made it as bare as a pasture; but it has since 
become pretty well covered by second-growth timber. > 

The New York and Ottawa Railroad (originally the Northern 
Adirondack) enters the town near its northeastern corner, and extends 
to the heart of Tupper Lake village, a distance of perhaps ten or twelve 
miles — giving the place a direct outlet to Moira on the Rutland Rail- 
road, and also a through line to the Canadian capital. It reached 
Tupper Lake in 1889. The Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railway, 
built in 1892, traverses the central part of the town, its mileage in 
Altamont being about the same as that of the New York and Ottawa, 
which it crosses at that part of the village called Faust, nearly two 



132 Histoey of Fbanklin County 

miles north from the terminus of the latter. Both lines are controlled by 
the New York Central. 

Until two or three years before Altamont was erected as a town it 
was all uninhabited except for a section in the neighborhood of the vil- 
lage and at a point on Big Tupper lake that is called Moody. A half 
a century ago, in a presidential year, a few among the voters here would 
travel to the polls at Dickinson Center in order to exercise the elective 
franchise — sometimes going by way of Potsdam and Moira, and at 
others through the woods on foot along a " tote " road that was little 
better than a trail. Now, though Altamont has three convenient polling 
places, it is perhaps doubtful if a larger percentage of its seven or 
eight hundred electors take the trouble to cast their ballots than was 
the case with the little handful when it was necessary to journey a hun- 
dred-odd miles if they went via Potsdam, or thirty-five or forty miles if 
they tramped through the woods. Still, it is the fact that Altamont 
is one of the liveliest towns in the county politically, and its party 
leaders are always zealous and awake. 

Still another illustration of the former inaccessibility of the place 
is that when Mr. Whitney was school commissioner he visited the 
district but once in six years, and then walked to it through the forest. 
When Mr. Dewey of Moira was commissioner, some years later, and 
visited the Tupper Lake school, he made the trip via Saranac Lake. 
Even as late as 1884 the entire assessed valuation of resident property 
in the school district, which comprised the entire town, was barely 
five thousand dollars, while now the school houses are estimated to be 
worth sixty thousand dollars — the high school building at Tupper 
Lake, with its furnishings, having alone cost forty thousand dollars. 

A man named Michael Cole is said to have been the first settler some- 
thing like seventy years ago, and Epps probably the second. 

The latter remained for only about two years, Simeon J. Moody buying 
his betterments, and continuing to occupy the place until his death, two 
or three years ago. Other early comers were Ziba Brigham and Reuben 
R. Stetson with their families, and Theodoras Westcott and William 
McLaughlin. The latter came to be foreman for the Pomeroys, who 
owned lands in the vicinity which they were about to lumber, and whose 
operations made the Tupper Lake village clearing. Mr. McLaughlin 
was for many years the only resident within what are now the village 
limits, a large part of which he owned at one time, and where he died 
in 1905. George McBride came about 1860, locating about two miles 



Altamont 133 

up the river, near the iron bridge, and was a combination of farmer, 
guide, fisherman and trapper; and in 18G5 Martin M. Moody built the 
hotel at the point on Big Tupper lake now known as Moody, which 
he managed until he sold to Pliny Robbing about 1888, when he moved 
up the lake about a half a mile and built the Waukesha, owned later by 
Jabez D. Alexander. "Mart's" fund of stories was inexhaustible, and 
made him one of the best known characters of the wilderness. Fact or 
even probability entered into few of them, and the more grotesquely 
imaginative or wildly extravagant he could make them the more char- 
acteristic they were. A single one may he quoted: Seeking to i in press 
a visitor with the intensity of the cold which was sometimes experienced^ 
he told of having started one morning for the barn with a pail of boil- 
ing water, which froze almost as soon as the door closed behind him. 
Ee-entering the house, he discovered that the water had congealed so 
quickly that the ice was actually hot ! 

Other familiar names in the region forty or fifty years ago are Sam. 
Moriarty, Nelson LaFountain, William E. LaFountain, William John- 
son, "Mother" Johnson, "Priest" Clark, and Donald (i. 

McDonald, though "Mother" Johnson was at the falls, perhaps thirty 
miles distant. Mr. Clark was a local preacher, but of what denomina- 
tion or whether an ordained minister I do not know. He held religious 
services in his own house and at the homes of others until the first 
school house was built, after which the latter served for a meeting 
house. McDonald is remembered as a vocalist and exhorter. William 
E. LaFountain came in 1876, and married a daughter of Mr. McLaugh- 
lin. He was a school teacher and surveyor until his removal a few 
years ago to Cass Lake, Minn., where he is engaged in the mercantile 
business. He was one of the early supervisors of Altamont. Perez M. 
Freeman settled at Moody about 1878. 

Theodorus Westcott and Sarah Cole, daughter of the first settler, 
were the first couple married in the locality, about 1850. The story 
runs that a surveyor or timber cruiser, who was a justice of the peace 
from Potsdam or Canton, chanced to visit the place, whereupon it was 
determined to take advantage of his presence to have the ceremony per- 
formed. In order to avoid any question of jurisdiction, the party 
repaired to a small island two miles from the Cole homestead, in 
Grindstone Bay, and in St. Lawrence county, where the twain were 
made one. The island has been known ever since as "Sally's Rock." 
Mr. Westcott died in 1853, and William McLaughlin married his widow 
in 1855. 



134 History of Franklin County 

" Peter's Bock," better known and more talked about in the old 
days, was named for Captain Peter Sabattis (the surname a corruption 
of St. Baptist). The legend is that Captain Peter once jumped from 
the rock to the shore, a distance of sixteen feet. Sabattis was an Indian 
hunter and trapper, is said to have served as a soldier in the war of the 
revolution, and is reputed to have lived to the age of one hundred and 
eight years. 

It was the advent of the Northern Adirondack Eailroad that brought 
real life to the region. Until that event the only activities were small 
farming, hunting, trapping and guiding, the entertainment of the 
rarely occasional sportsman who penetrated here even as early as 1855 
or 1860, and logging operations early by the Pomeroys and by others 
in the few years immediately antecedent to the railroad. These latter 
reflected the reaching out by mill owners down the river for a larger 
supply and a better stand of timber than was left along the lower 
stretches of the stream, and John Snell, the father of our present 
Congressman, was the principal contractor and jobber along these lines. 
The railroad extension from Brandon or Bay Pond was distinctively a 
lumber project, undertaken by John Hurd, of Santa Clara, to create 
new business for the road and also to open a new field for, his side 
enterprises, but who in developing the western part of our county 
involved himself in ruin. Tupper Lake in particular owes its very exist- 
ence to Mr. Hurd, and is the best monument to his persistence and his 
faith in the future of the region. 

At once upon the completion of the railroad to Tupper Lake, settlers 
began to arrive in considerable numbers, and founded industries, estab- 
lished stores and opened hotels. The growth was marvelously rapid for 
a wilderness town, but raw and rough at first. The railroad and the 
lumber interests imported labor, and the varieties were many, without 
all being attractive. A single early lot included city toughs, Italians 
and negroes, who were scrapping even before they had finished their 
breakfast. Such structures as were erected for the shelter of workers, 
bosses and mechanics were of the flimsiest and roughest kind, and most 
of the goods that the stores handled were coarse and cheap, while prices 
were all that " the traffic would bear." One concern had as stock prac- 
tically nothing except goods not salable in an establishment owned by 
one of the firm in an older community, and included in the lot were 
hundreds of pairs of heavy pegged boots that had been taken in trade 
through many years from country makers, and which the merchant 



Altamont 135 

would have been glad to close out at the home store at fifty nuts per 
pair. Here, however, there was a hot scramble for them at from lour 
to six dollars per pair. And pretty much everything else was of a similar 
grade, and sold in proportion. Whiskey brought twenty-five cents a 
glass, and beer half a dollar a bottle. A store trade of thousands of 
dollars a day when camp orders came in to be filled was not uncommon. 
Howard H. Hobson came from Vermont, and Moses Potvin erected 
the first sawmill for him. He remained for only a short time — selling 
his plant to the A. Sherman Lumber Co. of Potsdam. At this date 
Potsdam and Norwood establishments had found that to get logs from 
a point so remote as Tupper Lake was unwarrantably expensive. The 
" hanging up " of a drive meant, first, that two years' cuts were on the 
hands of owners at the same time, thus tying up a large capital; and, 
second, that a considerable part of a drive was apt never to reach its 
destination, because of logs lodging along the river banks, or becoming 
so water soaked that they would not float. Facilities for transportation 
of lumber having been provided, it seemed to be the better business 
course to locate the mills close to the source of timber supply. The 
Hobson mill went up in smoke after a time, but was rebuilt by the 
Shermans or Sissons, or both, who continued to operate it until 1915, 
when the structure, but not the machinery, and the surrounding lands 
were sold to the Oval Wood Dish Company of Traverse City, Mich. 
The old mill will be demolished, and one of concrete with modern and 
special equipment will supplant it. The machinery for this plant is to 
be brought from Michigan, which the company is abandoning because 
it has exhausted the timber on its holdings there. The company has 
bought lands outright or the hardwood stumpage on a good deal more 
than one hundred thousand acres in Altamont and vicinity, which it is 
claimed will keep it going for half a century; and it will drive the 
work of building its plant energetically. It began manufacturing in 
the autumn of 1917, but other mills are yet to be equipped. Its plans 
call for the erection of eight or ten immense structures along the high- 
way leading from Tupper Lake Junction to Tupper Lake proper, 
which will help toward closing the vacant territory between the two 
points, and perhaps eventually, as operatives fix their homes near the 
mills, fill completely the gap now not built up there. All of the build- 
ings are to be of concrete, and all are to be heated from a central plant. 
Electricity is to he generated with waste from the mill as a fuel, and 
it is estimated that besides having an abundance of power for itself the 



136 History of Feanklin County 

company will have a considerable surplus to sell to other interests, 
which it is hoped may be attracted to the locality by the inducement of 
cheap power. Moreover, the municipally owned electric light works do 
not pay the cost of operation and upkeep, and the company has con- 
tracted with the village to supply current for the latter's plant, which 
makes the distribution to consumers. One of the Oval Dish Com- 
pany's buildings will be exclusively for the use of operatives for recrea- 
tion purposes, and will contain a gymnasium, a hall for games and 
entertainments, and a kitchen. Here the management expects to serve 
free coffee to such of the employees as may lunch there. Another 
structure, for a warehouse, is to be two hundred and forty by four 
hundred feet on the ground, with two railroad tracks running into it. 
The roof area of the entire group of buildings will measure about seven 
acres. Of course the management is not itself giving out figures of 
the probable amount of its investment, but the talk among outsiders is 
that it can not fail to reach at least a half a million dollars. Opinions 
differ widely as to the number of people that these works will add to 
the population, ranging from five hundred to four thousand — the 
lower figures being based upon the assumption that a good deal of the 
help will be recruited from among those who are already residents, and 
the latter upon belief that the entire force will come from outside, and 
that other industries will develop in connection. The management 
states that three hundred and fifty men and about three hundred women 
and girls will be employed. In a way, the corporate title of the con- 
cern is a bit misleading, as its principal output will be hard wood 
lumber, probably six or seven million feet per year, and its other 
products will consist exclusively of clothespins and the thin oval dishes 
used so commonly by butchers and grocers, to be made from those parts 
of the logs which otherwise would be waste. Chopping bowls and other 
wooden ware, contrary to what many have understood, are not to be 
made. Eailroad spurs are to be built very soon, running four miles 
east and an equal distance west from the New York and Ottawa at 
Derrick, and another line will be run later from Tupper Lake toward 
Axton and Wawbeek in order to tap the company's timber tract in that 
direction. The enterprise stands for the largest single industry that 
Franklin county has ever had the good fortune to have located within 
its borders, and it has every indication of having ample capital back of 
it and of being under a management that is to be considerate of its 
employees and helpful in many respects to the community at large. 



Al/TAMONT 137 

The second mill at Tupper Lake, a wonder in its day, was built by 
John Hurd in 1890, and the expenditure- which it piled 

upon his other undertakings and obligations, made a load heavier than 
he could continue to carry. As a consequence, the mill went into the 
possession of the Shepard-Morse concern of Boston for a year or two, 
and then to the Export Lumber Company of New York. Next Patrick 
A. Ducey ran it for a year, and C. L. & D. .) . Becker and W. \Y. 
Wh.chr also operated it, after which the Norwood Manufacturing Com- 
pany had it until 1913, when that company was merged mt«> the Santa 
Clara Lumber Company. The latter has remodeled the mill, and 
added to it — one of its adjuncts ben,- a large pulp and planing mill. 
The saw mill is the largest in the State, it cut, only soft timber, its 
annual product r unning up to ten million feet. Besides making lumber 
and pulp, the company turns out and sells large quantities of chips, 
ready for conversion into pulp by the chemical process, and cuts and 
ships hemlock bark by the thousands of cords to tanneries. It has 
another mill, near Faust, which it operated until it acquired the Hurd 
property, but which is now idle, though not dismantled. While no one 
assumes to know such to be the expectation of the Santa Clara manage- 
ment, outside opinion is that both local and general market conditions 
will have to become exceptional, not to say anything about the available 
timber supply, to start the property into activity again — at least under 
its present ownership. 

In 1898 the Legislature authorized Cornell University to establish a 
school of forestry, and to acquire thirty thousand acres of timber lands 
in the Adirondack's for practical experiment and operation. The State 
paid for the lands, which were in the town of Harrietstown, just east of 
Altamont. The forester in charge of the school planned to cut all hard 
wood on the tract down to fourteen inches at the butt, and all soft 
timber down to eight inches, upon the theory that light and air would 
thus reach the trees left standing, the growth of which would then be 
more rapid. It was a part of the scheme also to fill in vacant places 
with young pine. The procedure would to-day be accounted good 
forestry provided that the territory so treated could be assured immunity 
from fire ravages. When about six thousand acres had been cut over as 
thus indicated, a wind upturned or snapped off nearly all of the trees 
that had not been felled, whereupon the school cleared the lands so 
that they were practically bare, and then undertook to reforest with 
seedlings. About two thousand four hundred acres were in fact so 



138 Histoey or Franklin County 

dealt with, and then fire swept in upon the tract, destroying many of the 
young plants. The practice as outlined was characterized at the time 
as vandalism, and action by the courts was invoked successfully to sup- 
press the operations, and to recover the lands from the school for the 
State. Of course the school had to have a purchaser for its cut timber, 
and found one in the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, which had there- 
tofore operated at Santa Clara and St. Regis Falls, but in 1900 built 
works at Tupper Lake, and constructed a lumber railroad seven miles 
in length from the latter place over toward Wawbeek in the town of 
Harrietstown for hauling logs from the school lands to its mill. Its 
contract was to pay five dollars per thousand feet for logs delivered at 
the railroad, which price barely covered the cost to the school of cutting 
and hauling, so that funds for replanting were insufficient. Operations 
ceased in 1904, when the courts prohibited further cutting and returned 
the tract to the State, whereupon the railroad was abandoned, and the 
rails sold for old iron. 

Besides its mill at Tupper Lake for making barrel staves and head- 
ings, the cooperage company installed and until 1915 operated a 
chemical works for the manufacture of charcoal, wood alcohol and 
acetate of lime from the waste at the stave mill. These works use hard 
wood only, and are at present operated by the Tupper Lake Chemical 
Company under lease from the cooperage concern. It buys the waste 
from the latter, and gives employment to from fifty to seventy-five men. 
The cooperage company's mill and logging camp hands number one 
hundred and fifty or more. 

C. H. Elliott, formerly at Derrick, has an establishment at Faust for 
making mangle rolls for laundries. He obtains his material from the 
Brooklyn Cooperage Company, and does a considerable business. 

There is also a railroad machine shop for repair work at Faust or 
Tupper Lake Junction, and the fact that this point is a division ter- 
minal makes it headquarters for a number of railroad operatives, con- 
tributing to its prosperity and importance. 

In 1896 Charles H. Turner, now of Malone, bought a large tract of 
timbered land in the northern part of Altamont, and the next summer 
built a sawmill at the place now called Derrick. His lumbering was on 
an extensive scale, the mill running both day and night for several 
years. Something like a hundred families comprised the then popula- 
tion, and the place, if of the mushroom order, partook also of a " boom " 
character for a time. The mill has been idle now for about ten years, 



Altamont 139 

but still stands, partly decayed, with all of the machinery in it as last 
used. Most of the inhabitants removed perforce with the discontinuance 
of operations by Mr. Turner, though twenty to thirty families con- 
tinued to make the place their home — occupying Mr. Turner's houses 
without payment of rent, and also having their gardens, pasturage, 
fuel, etc., free of cost. The stumpage remaining on. the tract has been 
sold to the Oval Wood Dish Company. 

After the sawmill ceased to be operated C. H. Elliott, now at Faust, 
conducted a plant at Derrick for two years for the manufacture of wood 
mangle rolls, turning out a product of three carloads a week — all of 
which was shipped abroad. The A. Sherman Lumber Company has 
recently maintained logging camps in the vicinity. When the Oval 
Wood Dish Company gets into full swing with its plant at Tupper Lake 
and with its logging camps, Derrick is expected to recover some of its 
former life and activity. 

Moody is the only point in Altamont other than Derrick, Tupper 
Lake and Tupper Lake Junction that even approaches the character of 
a hamlet. It lies near the foot of Big Tupper Lake, on the Kaquette 
river, three miles up from Tupper Lake village, is accessible by small 
steamers that ply the river and lake, and comprises a settlement of a 
dozen or fifteen families, a school, a church, a number of summer 
camps, and two hotels. One of the latter was an early sportsmen's 
resort, and, as previously noted, Mart. Moody, its proprietor, had an 
unique reputation as a raconteur of fanciful imaginary experiences with 
game, capable of qualifying under competitive tests with any of the 
older guides as a picturesque and entertaining liar. The church here, 
if not built by Colonel William H. Barbour of New York city, famed 
as the thread manufacturer and as an apostle of the benefits of the 
policy of a protective tariff, is at least supported by him. He has a 
summer camp on the western shore of the lake, in St. Lawrence county.* 
The church has a regular pastor, but has no denominational affiliations 
or connections — notwithstanding which, however, it must not be 
classed with the church officer who, as told by Booker Washington, 
when seeking to quiet the emotional manifestations of a negro auntie 

* Colonel Barbour died suddenly in New York in March, 1917, leaving a 
fortune of many millions. His camp and park on Tupper Lake embraced about 
twenty thousand acres, and the buildings cost probably close to two hundred 
thousand dollars. In April, 1918, the State purchased thirteen thousand one 
hundred and ninety acres of the Barbour park, or practically all of it except 
the buildings and the farm. The price paid was one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, which is considerably less than it cost Colonel Barbour. 



140 HlSTOBY OF FfiANKLIN COUNTY 

during a service, retorted to her explanation or excuse that she was 
" under the power," " Madame, this is no place to get religion." The 
key to the life at Moody is of course its location as a good sporting 
center and the business and employment based upon its neighboring 
summer camps of wealthy visitors. 

Altamont includes a number of summer camps and private parks 
owned by wealthy nonresidents, among which are those of H. M. Levy, 
the Kildare Club, J. V. Sheppey, Martin Sheppey, Wm. L. Ketcham, 
William A. Read, Charles Wheeler, B. L. Amerman and Edward H. 
Litchfield. The Kildare Club is composed of eminent and wealthy 
Jews, has a fine club house and owns seventeen or eighteen thousand 
acres of forest in the western part of the town. 

The Litchfield park, established in 1893, lies in the southwest corner 
of Franklin county, and comprised originally nine thousand acres laid 
out in rectangular form — to which six thousand acres, including 
Mount Morris, have since been added. It contains three lakes and two 
ponds. Mr. Litchfield, the owner, formerly a lawyer, but now retired 
from active pursuits, has been devoted all of his life to nature and the 
wilderness. His Adirondack attachment dates from 1866, when he 
began camping out and hunting in the region — continuing the practice 
for about ten years, when with the disappearance of the wolves and 
catamounts the woods here seemed to him no longer really wild, and 
he transferred his activities as a sportsman to the Rocky Mountains, 
though he had visited Europe even earlier for shooting. In subsequent 
years he has hunted in Asia and Africa, where he secured many 
trophies, as the contents of the great hall of the chateau in Litchfield 
park bear abundant witness. In establishing his park Mr. Litchfield 
intended to breed wild game under natural conditions, and, after erect- 
ing a wire fence eight feet high to inclose the entire tract, stocked it 
with large numbers of moose, elk, deer, wild bear, beaver, hares, etc., 
besides pheasants, black-game, capercailzie and other varieties of birds. 
But unfortunately breaks in the fence caused by falling trees, the 
severity of the climate and depredations by poachers combined to 
defeat his plan in considerable degree, and now the moose have entirely 
disappeared, and the elk and deer largely so. The beaver remain, how- 
ever, and are doing well. Mr. Litchfield's efforts in this regard deserve 
commendation, and should be employed by park owners generally in the 
hope of better success, now that the game laws are more thoroughly 
enforced and a more salutary sentiment prevails against poaching. The 



Altamont 141 

general practice in the past has been simply to kill, and those who 
frequent the wilds and love them owe it to the future to do something 
toward repairing the depletion that destructive energies have nought 
Alluring in itself, the great wilderness has added charm where wild 
life is abundant. 

Besides the features already noted, the work by Mr. Litchfield 
includes the construction of roads and the erection of buildings on a 
s'cale that has not been duplicated, so far as I know, on any property 
in the Adirondacks. In addition to having built a road to his park 
gates from Moody (now taken over as a public highway), and joining 
with his neighbor, Wm. A. Read, in tying the latter's park with his own 
by a drive three miles in length, he has constructed over fifteen miles of 
drives through his own grounds. His residential property consists of 
a chateau, finished in 1903, and built of stone, steel and concrete, on 
the shore of Lake Madeleine (formerly known as Jenkins Pond, hut 
renamed for Mrs. Litchfield). This water is irregular in shape, and 
its winding shores and islands, all densely wooded and unscarred by 
fire, make it one of the handsomest lakes in the Adirondacks. The 
floors of the chateau are of tile and marble, and the entire structure, 
including the roof, is as nearly fireproof as it was practicable to make 
it. Wherever wood trim had to be used it is merely a sheathing over 
steel beams or massive masonry, the least thickness of wall being 
three feet, and the greatest nearly six feet. The finish is in mahogany 
except in two or three rooms, and the furniture the same, much of it 
being inlaid or beautifully carved. The living rooms are many, and 
both in winter and summer are occupied frequently by guests. The 
chateau is of the French medieval type of architecture, and is as 
imposing as an old-world castle. It has two great towers, each three 
stories in height, and the land front is 146 feet long, with an arcade 
extending along about one-half of the building., which is two stories in 
height. On the lake side there are three terraces stepping clown to the 
water edge. Besides the living rooms, there are a library two stories 
high in one of the towers, containing 4,000 volumes of English, French 
and Italian literature; a great hall 30 feet wide by 30 feel high and 65 
feet long, hung along the walls with the heads of 160 wild animals, 
all of them sporting trophies of Mr. Litchfield or bis son, from all 
quarters of the world. They include lions, rhinoceros, a giraffe, and, 
indeed, almost every species of game or predacious animal excepl 
leopards, tigers, elephants and buffalo. A number of grizzly bear skins 



142 History of Franklin County 

serve as rugs. Two suits of ancient armor stand at the entrance. At 
one end of this hall is a great fireplace with an antique black-marble 
mantel of the time of Henry II fifteen feet high with a six-feet opening, 
which was brought from France, and over which is superb filigree work 
in gilt. There are in other rooms a large number of antique fireplaces, 
all brought from old chateaux or castles in England or France, and the 
collection of which extended over a period of several years preceding 
the erection of the building. All of the corridors are decorated with 
deer or stag horns, mostly foreign. There is also an art gallery con- 
taining many fine paintings, some of which are by old masters. The 
chateau is lighted throughout by electricity and heated by steam, and 
has every convenience to make it not merely a comfortable but a luxuri- 
ous home, either for summer or winter occupancy. There are a boat- 
house, garage and stable, each of stone, corresponding in type of archi- 
tecture to that of the chateau. Three quarries were developed within 
the park in order to obtain the necessary varieties and colorings of stone 
to give harmonious and impressive effect to the chateau walls. 

Tupper Lake village is divided into two parts, viz., Tupper Lake and 
Faust, which is the post-office designation, or Tupper Lake Junction in 
the railroad nomenclature. The corporation's boundaries extend more 
than two miles from north to south, and, of course, include a good deal 
of vacant land between the two sections of the village. Though the 
census of 1915 shows a population of 3,910 in the village, a critical 
examination of the enumerators' original returns discloses that one of 
them includes as residents within the corporation several hundred per- 
sons whose homes are in fact outside of the village boundaries. Thus 
the figures overstate the actual population by nearly a half. It is esti- 
mated that perhaps a third of the village inhabitants are at the point 
called Faust, and the remainder in the section known as Tupper Lake. 
The altitude here is 1,540 feet above sea level, but, as is the habit in 
most Adirondack villages, the residents are wont to call it more. The 
village derived its name from the lake, which is three miles distant, and 

which was named in compliment to Tupper, the surveyor, 

who, with Mr. Mitchell, established the outlines of the Macomb pur- 
chase a little earlier than 1800, and who almost perished of starvation 
in making his exit from the wilderness. 

Tupper Lake is distinctively a business and manufacturing point, 
and has expended little or no effort to attract visitors or residents in 
search of health, though its natural advantages as a sanatorium would 



Altamont 143 

appear not to differ appreciably from those of Saranac Lake. But 
sentiment is rather averse to investing the place with the character of 
a center for tuberculous people, though in 1910 Rebecca LaFountain, 
Lena S. McLane and Dr. Chas. Kyttenberg incorporated the Tupper 
Lake Sanatorium, capitalized at $25,000, erected a building for the 
care of .patients, and for a time had a business that indicated that with 
due effort and attention an institution of considerable proportions 
might have been developed. Two physicians were employed, hut upon 
the death of one of them and the removal of the other from the town 
the enterprise was abandoned. 

As indicated earlier in this chapter, the settlement of Tupper Lake 
upon the extension of the railroad there in 1889 and in the years 
immediately following consisted in larger part of rude and ignorant 
classes; common laborers who were attracted by assurance of steady 
employment at good wages, and an attendant sprinkling of men who 
saw in the then prevailing conditions opportunity for profitable mer- 
chandising and other commercial undertakings. The buildings origi- 
nally erected corresponded with the general character of the population, 
and the place was a typical frontier hamlet, little restrained by law and 
caring less for the comforts, luxuries and refinements of maturer com- 
munities — all of which has changed vastly within fifteen or eighteen 
years. Still, the people are more mixed than in any other village in the 
county, and include many differing elements and many racial extrac- 
tions — the native American, the Irish and the French predominating, 
with perhaps a five per cent, representation of Jews. 

The real modernization of Tupper Lake began with, or, rather, fol- 
lowed closely, the great fire of July 30, 1899, when property estimated 
to have a value of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more was 
destroyed, and practically the entire business section of the upper vil- 
lage left in ruins. One hundred and sixty-nine buildings, two-thirds 
of which were dwellings, were wiped out; and so severe was the loss 
that momentarily there was talk of abandoning the site utterly, and 
concentrating all that it had been at Faust. But that counsel of 
paralysis and despair commanded no serious consideration after 
recovery from the first shock of the calamity, and almost at once a 
spirit of pluck and enterprise asserted itself, which in due course made 
the place far more substantial, more attractive and larger and 
thriftier than could have been thought possible in its younger life — 
winning for it on the part of its people the proud characterization of 



144 History of Franklin County 

the " Tiptop town of the Adirondacks," which signifies their confident 
belief that it is destined to become the most prosperous and the most 
populous municipality in Franklin county. While some of the con- 
ditions may be taken as warranting that expectation, those who hold 
it and hope to see it realized must yet not overlook the fact that dis- 
appointment is certain to be experienced if those who are exploiting the 
natural resources of the region continue to disregard the necessity for 
reforestation. Unless this policy be instituted and practiced, the place 
can not fail eventually to go to decay and practical abandonment. 

The installation of a gravity water-works system was undertaken in 
1899 as an individual enterprise, a company for the work having been 
incorporated by home business men, who afterward sold to the late 
Colonel Barbour. The source of supply is a spring pond up on the 
hills three or four miles distant, at an elevation of over two hundred 
feet — thus affording a pressure adequate for fire protection. Its 
present capital is $50,000, and of an authorized issue of $150,000 trust 
mortgage bonds $87,500 are outstanding. The mains of the system 
radiate through all parts of the upper village, as well as through the 
streets of Faust, and leave no occasion for maintaining fire apparatus 
other than hose and carts. The fire department, therefore, consists of 
three hose companies of thirty members each, and local opinion deems 
these organizations admirable and efficient. 

A municipal electric lighting plant, with steam power, was built in 
1903 at a cost of $16,500, to which extensions and further equipment 
have added about $9,000. It gives a twenty-four hours' service at rates 
which are claimed to be as low as those of any other place in the State, 
and considerably lower than most. (They are less than two-thirds of 
those prevalent in Malone.) All payments for the retirement of bonds 
and for interest charges have been made thus far from the proceeds of 
a direct village tax instead of from earnings, but, on the other hand, 
there has been no tax for street lighting. When the plant was run with 
waste from the mills for fuel it is said that the revenue was sufficient 
to cover current expenses, but when coal had to be used almost exclu- 
sively there was an annual deficit. The annual cost of operation and 
upkeep is about $14,500. 

The village employs one uniformed paid policeman, and spends 
altogether for police service about $3,000 a year. 

Other village expenses include about $6,000 for street work and an 
equal amount for bond and interest payments. The total expenses run 
to about $35,500 per annum. 



Altamont 145 

Always excepting William McLaughlin's residence, at which he was 
long accustomed to entertain the sportsmen who occasionally found 
their way in early times to the locality, the first hotel at Tuppei Lake, 
in 1890, was the Altamont, built by J. H. and Thomas L. Weir, unless 
possibly John Hurd's American House, with Nelson Parks as manager, 
may have preceded it, and unless also the boarding house of Joseph 
Demars, erected in 1889 near the Hurd mill, be classed as an inn. The 
latter was in fact the first place opened in the locality for the accom- 
modation of the public, though mostly it served workmen employed on 
the railroad, in the lumber camps and in the mills. Kenneth Kinnear 
also had an early hotel. Since these pioneer days hotels, so-called, have 
multiplied surprisingly, and the liquor tax records of the county 
treasurer make their number in 1917 no less than eighteen, though not 
more than three or four of them do a genuinely commercial business. 
The others are in fact boarding houses, claiming to be hotels only in 
order that they may as such exercise the privilege of selling liquor. 
There were in 1917 eleven other places in the town — saloons, stores, 
etc. — which held liquor tax receipts, making the whole number one to 
every one hundred and thirty-odd of the population. 

The village has three school houses, one of which is in the section 
called Faust. The high school building cost, including furnishings, 
not far from $40,000, and six teachers are employed in it. Work of an 
academic grade is done here. In the entire town, which is all combined 
in a single school district, there are seven public school buildings, with 
twenty-nine teachers. 

Tupper Lake has also a parochial school, supported by the Church 
of St. Alphonsus, at which between four hundred and five hundred 
pupils are enrolled. The teachers in it number nine, and are Sisters of 
the order of the Holy Ghost, exiled a few years ago from France. The 
building is a substantial two-story brick structure, adjacent to the 
church, and was erected in 1903 under the pastorate of Rev. Father 
Constantineau. 

The banking facilities have been adequate and satisfactory for 
over ten years past, but prior to the organization of the present insti- 
tution gave trouble and caused hardship. The firm of A. C. Wilcox 
& Co., private bankers of New York city, had one of their numerous 
branch offices at Tupper Lake when they suspended in May, 1905. 
They were under no governmental supervision, and had no reliability or 
responsibility beyond that afforded by their personal resources — 



146 History of Franklin County 

which proved not to be large. The amount of deposits held by this 
branch when the break came was about twelve thousand dollars, a con- 
siderable proportion of which represented the savings of poor and hard- 
working men and women, and in some cases the little all of depositors 
who were carrying their small accumulations in the branch for safe 
keeping until they should be large enough to make a payment on a 
home. Six months later men of the village who commanded public 
confidence took steps to organize a real bank, paid in $25,000 of actual 
money as capital, obtained a charter under the national banking act, 
and in June, 1906, opened for business an institution which has been 
of substantial benefit and helpfulness to the business interests of the 
town and of profit to the stockholders. The first board of directors was 
composed of the following: Ira B. Hosley, Dr. J. A. Thissell, James 
L, Jacobs, Wm. J. Dievendorf. P. H. McCarthy, U. S. Scott, Barnett 
Propp, B. Seigel and Henry H. Day. The bank began business with 
Mr. Scott as president and Frank D. Barry of Malone as cashier — 
the latter giving place after a few months to Charles E. Knox, who has 
held the position continuously, to the present time, and to whose serv- 
ices the bank is indebted in no small measure for its pronounced suc- 
cess. Mr. Jacobs is the present president, and until his entrance into 
the army Clarence S. Potvin was the assistant cashier. The capi'tal has 
not been increased, but a surplus of nearly $25,000 has been built up, 
deposits have grown to a total of nearly a half million, and total assets 
exceed $600,000. In 1913 one of the handsomest small banking houses 
in Northern New York was erected at a central point, and is carried 
in resources at a value of $18,174. New names in the directorate, due 
to the death or retirement for other causes of Messrs. Hosley, Dieven- 
dorf, Scott, Thissell, Propp and Day are Albert S. Hosley, Mr. Knox, 
D. J. Hayes, E. J. Hosley, L. C. Maid, Ealph Hastings, J. Howard 
Brown and Peon P. Demars. 

The Church of St. Alphonsus (Eoman Catholic), incorporated in 
1890, was the first to be formed in Altamont. The parish originally 
included Faust. Eev. D. J. Halde was the first pastor, himself building 
a log cabin for a parsonage, but occupied that relation for only a 
short time, as he died from exposure and arduous work. He was 
succeeded by Eev. Michael W. Holland, who served for ten years, and 
under whose ministration the church edifice was erected in 1891. It 
was enlarged in 1903, and is capacious and attractive. It represents a 
cost of about thirty-five thousand dollars. The society is by far the 



Altamont 147 

strongest and largest religious body in Altamont, and counts nearly 
five hundred families in its membership. 

In 1901 Rev. Father Constantineau, the then rector, ceded the terri- 
tory known as Faust in favor of a new and separate parish, and Rev, 
Father Alexander A. Klauder founded under such cession the Church 
of the Holy Name, drew the plans and began the erection of a church 
edifice, which was seven years in reaching completion, and, including 
the furnishings, stands for an expenditure of about thirty thousand 
dollars. Before the building of the church was undertaken services 
were held in Firemen's Hall. The society has a membership of two 
hundred families. Father Klauder remained pastor for five years, 
when differences between him and some of the members led to his dis- 
placement. It is not my province to enter at all into the particulars or 
even to touch upon the merits of this local quarrel, or the breach to 
which it led between Father Klauder and the higher dignitaries of the 
Church, and it must suffice to state that the feeling became exceedingly 
bitter, that Father Klauder was forcibly prevented by his former 
parishioners from even entering the church to attend a service con- 
ducted by his successor, that during his absence his household effects 
were thrown from the rectory into the street, and that subsequently the 
trouble broadened and was intensified by other factors until Father 
Klauder was committed to a hospital as insane, and has since been 
unfrocked. In turn he has sued the bishop and vicar-general for per- 
sonal damages, and in a publication issued by him at irregular intervals 
the bitterest of attacks are directed against these dignitaries and a 
number of priests in the diocese. Father Klauder has had no minis- 
terial assignment for several years past, and now resides in Malone. 

Services in accordance with the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church as first held at Tupper Lake consisted of lay readings by John 
Hurd in a room over the office of the Northern Adirondack Railroad. 
Mr. Hurd ran Sunday excursion trains from Santa Clara to Tupper 
Lake during this formative period. A few years later a missionary 
was stationed at Tupper Lake for a time. The church edifice was 
erected in 1899 through the efforts of Rev. John N. Marvin, diocesan 
missionary, and cost about a thousand dollars. The society has thirty- 
five members. A few years ago a fine rectory Avas given by a trcntleman 
as a memorial to his son, who had died at Tupper Lake.* 



* In the winter of 1017 the rectory with all of its contents was burned. The 
vector. Mr. Boyd, was alone in it "at the time, and escaped, though severely 
burned. 



148 History of Franklin County 

Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of Altamont was incorporated 
January 20, 1896, though divine worship by members of this denomina- 
tion had been maintained from 1891. A church building was erected 
a little later, and was destroyed in the big fire in 1899. It was replaced 
almost at once at a cost of about five thousand dollars, the new structure 
being of brick and architecturally attractive. The church has seventy- 
five members. 

The Presbyterian Church of Tupper Lake, N. Y., had its beginning 
in the summer of 1900, when services were held in the school house at 
Faust by a Mr. Ferguson, then by Eev. Joseph McNeil of Piercefield, 
and next by John Nevin, a Princeton theological student. The church 
building is the same that was formerly at Brandon, and was brought 
from there to Faust in 1901 and re-erected at a cost of about four hun- 
dred dollars. It was not until December 10, 1905, that incorporation 
was effected, the Adirondack Mission contributing meantime to the 
support of the undertaking. Eev. Aaron W. Maddox, since famed as the 
lumberjack missionary, served the society as stated supply from 
November, 1901, to April, 1911, and then as pastor for two years and 
a half. 

The only synagogue in the county is at Tupper Lake. It was built 
in 1906 by Congregation Anshey Beth Joseph, and was afterward con- 
veyed to Congregation Beth Joseph. Prior to the date stated services 
according to the Jewish ritual had been held at private residences. 
The Congregation Beth Joseph is served by B. Brennglass, rabbi, who 
acts also as teacher of the school which the organization supports, and 
whose sessions are held in the basement of the synagogue. There are 
twenty-eight families and a few single men attached to 'Congregation 
Beth Joseph. 

A Boman Catholic church or mission was formed at Derrick about 
1900, and was served for six or seven years regularly by Zeno De Carey, 
Joseph Hervieux and J. E. Berard ; but with the suspension of the 
Turner lumbering operations the population became so scant that dis- 
continuance of regular services followed, and there has since been no 
resident rector. Father Berard, now at Lake Clear, continues to visit 
the place once in a month or two, however. 

Altamont Lodge No. 609, I. O. O. F., was organized September 9, 
1891, and has thirty-seven members. 

St. John Baptist Society, formed in 1893, is a strong and flourishing 
organization, owns its own lodge room, and has about one hundred and 
fifty members. 



Altamont 149 

Mt. Arab Lodge No. 847, F. and A. M., was organized June 1, 1904, 
and has one hundred and six members. It owns its lodge room. 

On Sunday evening, February 24, 1889, four men were playing cards 
at the house of William McLaughlin in Tapper Lake, when one of 
them, Ziba Westcott, son of one of the earliest settlers and stepson of 
McLaughlin, accused one of the others — John Smith, son-in-law of 
McLaughlin — of having cheated. Westcott was slight, sightless in 
one eye, and Smith a physical giant with muscles like tempered steel, 
the most powerful man in the locality, and said to have been of vicious 
disposition. There had been previous bad blood between the two, and 
Smith was said to have threatened to " get " Westcott. Instantly fol- 
lowing the accusation, Smith struck Westcott a smashing blow over the 
eye, cutting a gash from which the blood flowed into the good eye, 
blinding him completely. Westcott drew a knife, and in the striking 
and parrying which followed' Smith's throat was cut to the windpipe, 
and he expired within a few minutes. Westcott was indicted for man- 
slaughter in the first degree. His defense was that, having been 
blinded by blood, he used the knife only to stand Smith off, and did 
not even know that he had cut him until after the affair was over, and 
he was told of its fatal issue. The jury returned a verdict of not 
guilty. Westcott became insane about fifteen years later, and is now an 
inmate of the State hospital at Point Airy. 

Erastus L. Sabin, familiarly known as " Rat " — a former resident 
of St. Eegis Falls, but at the time a liveryman at Tupper Lake — was 
found dead back of the ITurd sawmill in the morning of September 28, 
1898, shot through the head and through the breast, and with the head 
badly battered and crushed. Before the district attorney and the 
sheriff could reach Tupper Lake, the case had been bungled by local 
inquiry, and notwithstanding expert detective service was employed no 
sufficient grounds could be established to justify an arrest. The story 
as told at the time was that a stranger had called at the livery during 
the evening of September 27th and arranged for the delivery of a rig 
to him at a later hour at the place where Sabin's body was found : but 
that representation was not credited by the district attorney or by the 
sheriff, who were convinced in their own minds of quite other con- 
ditions and circumstances. General belief was that there was a woman 
in the case, and that it was her paramour who. finding Sabin with the 
woman, committed the murder. But whoever the murderer may have 
been, he escaped detection, and the mystery of the crime was never 
solved. 



150 History or Franklin County 

March 21, 1913, Joseph McWade, a New York Central special officer 
or. detective and also a special deputy sheriff, saw two men riding 
" blind " under the baggage car as a train was pulling out of Faust. 
Upon his indicating that he had seen them the men jumped from the 
car and started to run in opposite directions. McWade shot one of 
them (Arthur Lerrin) fatally, and wounded the other. He was 
indicted for manslaughter in the first degree — the charge being that 
without design to kill he had nevertheless unjustifiably and inexcusably 
caused death. The jury returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter 
in the second degree, with recommendation to the court for clemency. 
McWade was fined five hundred dollars. 

At Faust on January 2, 1915, John Morrison shot Ezra Alpert in 
the breast, inflicting a wound which resulted in death the same day. 
Alpert was an employee in the hotel where Morrison, a meat cutter, was 
boarding, and had refused to sell liquor to the latter, who was already 
under the influence of drink. In the frenzy of intoxication Morrison 
went to his room for his gun, and committed the crime. The men had 
been ordinarily on quite friendly terms. Morrison was found guilty of 
murder in the second degree, and was sentenced to twenty years' 
imprisonment at Dannemora. 

Other tragedies in Altamont include the burning of the boarding 
house of Julius King on Christmas morning, 1902, when one of the 
boarders and Mrs. McGovern (King's daughter) and her four children 
perished in the flames, and also the burning of Antoine Caron's house 
in 1906. Two children were burned to death in the latter fire. 



CHAPTER V 
BANGOR 

Bangor was organized from Dickinson June 15, 1812. It originally 
included all of the old town of Brandon, but now consists of a single 
township, which is said to have been named by the' Macomb purchasers 
from a town in Wales. It is regarded as one of the best farming towns 
in the county, though in parts the soil is too light to be very productive. 
The Duncher, Sand hill or Taylor brook traverses the town from its 
southeast corner to the western border, a small stream (tbe Little 
Salmon river) takes its course through the western part, and it is 
watered also by a number of brooks. The surface is generally level. 

The census of 1820 gave the population as 370, which increased to 
1,076 in 1830, and to 2,520 in 1860, from which date until 1910 it 
decreased slowly to 1,916. By the enumeration of 1915 it is 2,179. 
The proportion of citizens to aliens is larger than in any other town in 
the county, the -latter numbering only six. A few years ago Bangor 
had about the liveliest and most thorough Republican political organiza- 
tion in the county, and to the zeal of its leaders in looking for voters is 
perhaps attributable the fact that nearly all aliens were naturalized. 
The people of the town generally have always been of a sturdy and 
intelligent type, with a considerable percentage of men alive to busi- 
ness opportunity and insistent upon public order and individual 
decency, though it is not meant thereby to say that good men were 
not at times inclined to a bit of wildness. In point of morality the 
community ranked from the first among the best. 

The first settler within the bounds of Bangor as it now exists was 
Benjamin Seeley in 1806, who was followed the same year by Joseph 
Plumb. Both came from Moira, to which they had emigrated from 
Vermont two or three years previously. Mr. Seeley located about a mile 
east of North Bangor Corners. Later in the same year James and 
Jehiel Barnum located, and were followed in 1807 by Chester Tullar, 
Robert Wilson, Joel Griffin and others. Probably in no other town in 
Franklin county has the original stock so taken root, multiplied and 
survived in its descendants. Run over the names of the pioneers and 

[151] 



152 History of Franklin County 

of the others who became their associates within the next quarter of a 
century, and note how familiar most of them are in the present genera- 
tion, and how numerous are those now resident in the town who hear 
them: Joseph Plumb, Joshua, Gardner, Luther and Henry Dickinson, 
Coddington and Levi Conger, Jonathan «Bowen, Barnabas, Jehiel and 
James Barnum, Ezra French, Levi and Sylvester Potter, Isaac and 
James Bigelow, William G. White, Caleb Bates, Reuben and Simeon 
Davis, James and George Adams, Eichard, Lucius and Henry King, 
Jesse Smith, Russell Lee, Harvey and David Doty, Samuel Brigham, 
Hiram Frank, Gabriel and Alanson Cornish, John and Horace Knapp 
(the former the father of Wells of Malone), Elisha Keeler, Jennison 
Dyke, Warren Tower, Jonathan, Nehemiah and Benjamin 1ST. Law- 
rence, Heman Harwood, Abel Wilcox, John W. Crooks, Danforth Pat- 
terson, Andrew Spaulding, George W., Daniel and Hiram Taylor, 
Samuel and Anderson Wilson, and Noah Moody, the last named having 
removed in a short time to Malone. In the fathers and their sons the 
list measures pretty accurately and fully the sinew, enterprise and char- 
acter that distinguished Bangor during the first half century of its 
existence, and, though many others of ability and usefulness of later 
arrival have earned the right to be included as considerable factors in 
the business and civic life of the community, descendants of most of 
those named are among the foremost men of the town to-day — respected 
and prominent. Nearly all of the early settlers came from Vermont. 

On the tombstone of one of these pioneers at North Bangor is this 
inscription : " Gabriel Cornish died March 27th, 1841, in the 83d year 
of his age. He served during the entire war of the revolution, took 
part at the battles of Saratoga and Monmouth, was an eyewitness of the 
execution of Andre and of the surrender of Burgoyne and 'Cornwallis, 
and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge." 

Though later comers, the Dustins have a lineage of remarkable inter- 
est. A considerable number reside in Bangor, Moira and Westville, 
the immediate descendants of Gilman, Jonathan and Charles, who set- 
tled in the last named town some sixty or seventy years ago. Among 
the descendants in Bangor are Mrs. 0. S. Ehoades and Mrs. Fred 
Chapin. In 169? an Indian attack was made upon Haverhill, Mass., 
and Hannah Dustin, sick in bed with a child only a week old, and her 
nurse were made captives. The child was brained as an encumbrance 
on the flight, and the women were taken into New Hampshire. Arrived 
at their lodges, the Indians apprehended no pursuit, nor any attempt 



Bangor 153 

by the women to escape, so that no guard was kept, nor were the cap- 
tives bound. One night Mrs. Dustin and the nurse, with a lad who 
had been previously captured, possessed themselves of their captors' 
tomahawks, and slew ten of the Indians as they slept, even taking the 
scalps of their victims for proof at home of their exploit. The Massa- 
chusetts House of Eepresentatives voted to each of the three a money 
recognition, and monuments have been erected to Mrs. Dustin at Haver- 
hill and at the site of the Indian camp. The Bangor, Moira and West- 
ville Dustins are direct descendants of Hannah Dustin. 

No one locality in the town seems to have been especially preferred 
for settlement by the first comers, and the central and southern parts, 
at the points which are now known as Bangor, North Bangor and 
West Bangor, grew in almost equal pace, though the last named was at 
one time more populous than either of the others, and is now third 
in such respect. There are also small settlements known as Cooks 
Corners and Baconville. 

The town has no really good water powers, and manufacturing enter- 
prises other than starch making have never been important. The census 
of 1825 listed the town as having one iron works, but the establishment 
would not now be so described, as in reality it was little more than a 
blacksmith shop, which was owned and operated by Joshua Dickinson. 
Its principal product was axes hammered out by hand, though Mr. 
Dickinson is quoted as -having stated that for a year or two, nearly a 
century ago, when hunting wolves for the bounties was so prevalent, he 
did little except to make wolf traps. Nearly all of the output of axes 
found sale in the towns of Bangor and Brandon and in the edge of 
Malone, the pioneers in these localities having depended almost wholly 
upon Mr. Dickinson for these implements, which, with the forests to be 
cleared before agriculture could be possible, were a first and indispens- 
able necessity. 

Joshua Dickinson built also and for many years operated a grist mill, 
a linseed oil mill, a starch mill, kept a store, and ran the hotel which 
had been kept earlier by William G. White. The grist mill and the 
oil mill (the former originally a stone structure) he sold in 1844 one- 
third to Thomas F. Mulholland and two-thirds to Hiram Taylor — the 
latter subsequently acquiring the Mulholland interest. The oil mill was 
simple and crude. It consisted of two great stones cut in circular form, 
with a diameter of perhaps seven or eight feet and a thickness of per- 
haps two feet, hung upon a shaft and revolving upon a stone bed. The 



154 History of Franklin County 

mill was operated by horse power. The flax seed was placed on the 
bed, and the stones, edge on, ground it to a flour or meal, which was 
then heated in a revolving cylinder, and afterward subjected to great 
pressure in an iron press in order to force out the oil. The cakes of 
oil meal were sold to farmers for feed for stock. The mill was run even 
after production of flax in quantities had ceased in the locality, and 
seed had to be hauled from Montreal. Mulholland & Adams operated 
it in 1863. When the stone grist mill was burned it was rebuilt of 
wood, and Mr. Taylor ran it until he died in 1861. It was then bought 
and worked for years by Edmund F. Sargent, and since him by James 
H. Sargent, Charles J. Adams, H. K. Eider and Newton Lawrence, 
Fred Dickinson, A. S. Knapp, Fred Lawrence, and now by Colton 
& Ward. 

A carding or cloth dressing mill, built by Caleb Bates and Reuben 
Davis prior to 1826, was acquired by Mr. Taylor in 1832, and carried 
on by him for a long time. Apparently he prospered in all of his under- 
takings, and mention must not be omitted that he bequeathed three 
thousand dollars to the trustees of Franklin Academy as a perpetual 
fund, the income to be awarded by them annually to three worthy, indi- 
gent students of the institution — two boys and one girl. The fund 
remains intact, and has served for more than half a century to aid 
students who otherwise must have foregone a higher education. The 
benefaction is one of the finest, with admirable results, that any resident 
of our county ever created, and it would be fortunate if Mr. Taylor's 
example in this regard were followed by others. 

A tannery, built of stone by Abel Wilcox, who started out as a shoe- 
maker, still stands, having been converted into a tenement house. As 
a tannery it outlived its usefulness a good many years ago. There was 
also at one time a distillery, which I think was located at a point on 
the brook above the Keeler wheelwright shop. It is said to have made 
whiskey from potatoes. It was built by Danforth or L. B. Patterson, 
probably by the latter, but did business for only a few years. Of course 
there were asheries, too. 

The Dickinson hotel was a large double house on the north side of 
the turnpike, just west of its intersection with the cross road from 
North Bangor. It still stands, and is a private residence. Before Mr. 
Dickinson's occupancy it was owned by Henry Vail, and kept by William 
G. White. Besides the Dickinson house, which was less a general hotel 
than an inn to accommodate stage travel, Colonel Luther Taylor had 



Bangor 155 

a tavern on the north side of the turnpike, near the brook. A part of 
the building is still there. 

The next hotel at Bangor after these was that of Hial Bentley in the 
building which Edmund F. Sargent purchased in 1867, and made over 
into a home. The building was erected in 1851. After Mr. Bentley, 
Parrit B. ("Put") Wolf was landlord until he entered the army as 
a captain in the 98th regiment in 1861, when Joshua Pillings took the 
management, and was followed by Abe Staves until Mr. Sargent bought 
the property. Then Henry Bentley and Dana C. Adams converted into 
a hotel the stone building on the corner which had been Danforth Pat- 
terson's store and residence. They added an annex for a dance hall, 
and ran the establishment until about 1878, when Jarvis Austin suc- 
ceeded them. Next Steve Fosburg had it for a time, and was followed 
by James Fish. Then William H. Pearson (since a suicide) and A. H. 
McKimm came in for a few years, and afterward Mr. Fosburg was 
there again until the building burned in July, 1917. It is not expected 
to be rebuilt. 

Among the early merchants at Bangor were William G. White, Gard- 
ner Green, Barnes & Brown, Danforth Patterson, Joshua Dickinson, 
L. B. Patterson, G. L. Sargent (afterward a farmer and political war 
horse in Brandon), James C. Drake and William M. Leonard. Dwight 
Dickinson and Clark A. Patterson, Clark J. Dickinson and Thomas F. 
Mulholland, Allen Hinman, Hial Bentley, Nelson C. Lawrence and 
Eoswell H. Farr, were also in trade here for a time. While some of 
these did not long remain, and even their names have been forgotten, 
others continued in business for considerable periods and left an endur- 
ing impress. Danforth Patterson was the father of Clark A., who in 
his younger years was a live wire in the town, and later a stirring figure 
in Chateaugay, where bad associations got him into trouble. Mr. 
Drake became sheriff of the county, and lived thereafter in Malone. 
Joshua Dickinson's sons, William G. and Wells S., entered into partner- 
ship with him in 1846, and later Wells was associated with him in other 
enterprises also. William moved to Malone, was for several years a 
leading merchant there, and became county treasurer. A few years 
after the civil war he moved to Topeka, Kansas, and thence to National 
City, Cal. Wells was for a generation the most popular and 
influential man in Bangor, of unbounded energy and marvelous politi- 
cal and business activity. He served in the Assembly before the civil 
war, and in the State Senate from 1871 to 1875. He was a delegate to 



156 History of Franklin County 

Republican national conventions a number of times, and in his later 
years was in general charge of the Northern Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany's land, transportation and legislative interests. At one time he 
was one of the proprietors of a bank at Red Wing, Minn., was 
almost always deep in big speculative undertakings, was a manufacturer 
of starch on an extensive scale, and, next to William A. Wheeler, was 
the Republican leader or " boss " in Franklin county. Dwight and 
Clark, younger sons of Joshua, removed to M alone, and became whole- 
sale produce dealers. The former was supervisor of Malone a number 
of terms. Mr. Leonard sold his store in 1850, and removed to Rouses 
Point — returning in 1864 (having in the meantime engaged in farm- 
ing and in trade in Malone), and, again entering upon the mercantile 
business, admitted his son, Marcellus A., to a partnership in 1867. This 
arrangement continued until 1878, when Marcellus bought the store of 
Dickinson & Lawrence, and in 1884 his son, William C, and Willard 
B. Royce became partners with bim. Mr. Leonard retired in 1897, 
and now resides in Malone. He has given me a few items from his 
father's and his own books during the years prior to and just subse- 
quent to the civil war. Crackers were sold at one time by count 
instead of by weight, butter was fourteen cents per pound, and, brown 
sugar ten cents. After the war kerosene sold at eighty cents a gallon, 
flour at sixteen dollars a barrel, tea at a dollar and thirty-five cents per 
pound, and coffee sugar at eighteen cents. Considerably later kerosene 
sold as low as six and a half cents a gallon. 

Other merchants at Bangor have included Fayette W. Lawrence, 
Charles Whitney, and Edwin E. Dickinson, now of New York city. 

A fire at the hamlet June 22, 1899, destroyed the Leonard block 
(occupied by D. W. Grannis as a hardware store), N. W. Lawrence's 
store, Hinman & Marvin's drug store, A. S. Knapp's meat market, and 
several dwelling houses, with losses aggregating $20,000. 

July 2, 1917, a fire originating in an outbuilding extended quickly 
to the Fosburgh hotel and also to A. W. Ford's farm implement store 
and warehouse, both of which were destroyed. Willard B. Royce's gen- 
eral store and Mrs. Royce's millinery store, with their dwelling apart- 
ments overhead, and Fred Wilson's blacksmith shop were also burned. 
The total loss was estimated at nearly $30,000. Business conditions 
are such that there is no expectation that the Royce store or the hotel, 
a large stone building, will be replaced. 

Bangor was one of the first towns in the county to engage in the 



Bangor 157 

manufacture of potato starch, the first mill having been erected about 
1846 or 1847. There have been eight such mills in the town — four 
at Bangor, three at West Bangor, and one at North Bangor, near the 
railroad station. Not one is now running. The four at Bangor were all 
on the Sand Hill or Taylor Brook, and were built respectively by Joshua 
Dickinson and Isaac Wilson, Charles Adams, George Adams and Abel 
Wilcox. Changes in ownership during the activity of the mills were 
many — Wells S. Dickinson, Danforth Patterson, E. F. Sargent, Dexter 
P. Marvin, Pred P. Brown, D. W. Lawrence, Hannibal Wilcox and 
possibly others having been at one time or another either part or sole 
proprietors of some one or more of them. One of the mills at West 
Bangor was owned by J. V. Bowles, another by William L. and Horace 
A. Taylor, and the third by Davidson & Guernsey, which was burned. 
That at North Bangor was built and run by Wells S. Dickinson and 
"Jack" Doty. While these factories often paid as high as twenty-live 
or thirty cents per bushel for potatoes, and forty cents one year, the 
usual price was less. Often in the early years they contracted with 
farmers in 'the spring at twelve and a half cents per bushel, and some 
of the sellers used to claim that even at that low figure their potato 
crops had paid for their farms. The Taylor factory at West Bangor 
has been converted into a saw mill, while a part of the Bowles mill at the 
same place has become a barn, and another part is used as a place of 
worship by members of the Holiness Movement. 

Charles J. Adams and Harry Stancliff erected a mill at Bangor 
about 1870 or 1871 for making extract from hemlock bark for tanning 
purposes. The extract was barreled and shipped to tanners in localities 
where the supply of bark had been exhausted. A saw mill was con- 
nected with it. The building was burned in 1874, and was not replaced, 
though in 1886 Mr. Adams erected and equipped a planing mill, which 
was later torn down. 

James Jones had at one time a saw mill on the Sand Hill Brook, 
below the hamlet. It was run afterward by Hosea Burr, and was torn 
down about twenty years ago. A half mile or so farther west Charles 
Spaulding had a saw mill, .which was run after him by Eli, James and 
John Spaulding, but has not been in existence for fifty years or more. 
The hamlet of Bangor is lighted electrically by the Malone Light 
and Power Company, and has a gravity system of water works, pro- 
vided by private enterprise. Besides its little group of residences, it 
now contains a Congregational and a Methodist Episcopal church, the 



158 History of Franklin County 

grist mill, a creamery, L. W. Keeler & Sons' wheelwright shop, Fred 
Wilson's blacksmith shop, H. H. Bowles's paint shop, A. W. Ford's 
harness and agricultural implements salesrooms, Alonzo Avery's meat 
market, and stores by William M. Hinman and Bradford Brothers. 

At West Bangor (known once as Pottersville) the first saw mill is 
said to have been built at a very early day by Joseph Boss, Sr., and 
Samuel Silsbee also built one, about forty rods above the grist mill. 
No trace of the Silsbee mill remains. The Boss mill passed to the 
ownership of William Boss, who added a coffin and cabinet factory, 
and then to J. V. B. ("Bans") Bowles, who engaged also in making 
starch barrels extensively. This mill, now razed, was subsequently 
owned by Peter Boardway, who has removed the machinery to the old 
Taylor starch factory, farther down the stream. Mali Wood built a 
log grist mill at West Bangor, which he sold in 1819 to Levi Potter, 
who rebuilt it as a frame structure. It was run for many years by 
Mr. Potter, and since him by Charles H. Bartlett, Davidson & Guern- 
sey, Lyman Oliver, James Squires, Albert Larue, George Ayres, Myron 
Barber, and now by Scott G. Crooks. It has been owned for some years 
by John P. Kellas, of Malone, who has built a concrete dam and 
improved the property generally. 

Statement concerning the West Bangor starch factories appears on a 
preceding page. 

Levi Potter kept a hotel here, near the grist mill, and Daniel P. 
Moore had a primitive tavern on a side road in the vicinity. 

Nash Dyke operated a triphammer works near by, for which he 
obtained the iron in Duane, and in 1864, when cotton was so high in 
price, William L. Taylor bought the works and converted it into a flax 
mill. Besides buying flax from such farmers as could be persuaded to 
engage in its cultivation, he leased considerable tracts of land at fifteen 
dollars per acre, and raised large quantities on his own account. The 
flax was treated only to the point that prepared it for spinning, when 
it was shipped elsewhere to undergo that process and be woven into 
linen. The enterprise was continued for about three years. 

William L. and Horace A. Taylor, Orson L. Beynolds, Charles J. 
Adams and Harry Stancliff (the latter from Massachusetts) joined in 
1868 in building at West Bangor a mill to make tanning extract from 
hemlock bark. The business was at first largely experimental, and did 
not prove remunerative. A cord of bark would make twenty gallons 
of extract, which commanded a price of twenty cents a gallon. 



Bangor 159 

Eventually the business was put upon a paying basis, but a process was 
then invented for pressing the used bark into bricks salable in cities for 
fuel, so that tanneries remote from the forests could better afford to 
buy bark than the extract, and the industry had to be abandoned. The 
mill at West Bangor burned in 1870, when all of the partners except Mr. 
Adams and Mr. Stancliff withdrew, and these rebuilt at Bangor. The 
latter mill having also burned, it was not rebuilt. The loss by the two 
fires was between forty and fifty thousand dollars. 

Among the early mercantile ventures at West Bangor was the 
" Protective Union Store," in the ownership and management of which 
James Bigelow was prominent. The building, owned by Mr. Bigelow, 
was burned in 1856. Joseph Boss also had a store early, which was run 
later by Milo Hinman, Sumner Sweet and Josiah Crooks. Other mer- 
chants have been Dana Adams, Gustine Adams, William L. and George 
W. Taylor, S. D. Lawrence, Dr. Ira A. Darling, Nelson C. Lawrence 
and John O'Connell. At present the only stores are those of B. K. 
Fish and George Haley. 

About fifteen years ago the late George B. Taylor, born in the town 
and residing there for most of his life, prepared a history of Bangor 
(largely genealogical), in which it is stated that a Mr. Gallup, from 
whom the Gallup road was named, built a saw mill near his home, 
about a mile north of the turnpike. If this be true, the mill must have 
disappeared before 1840, as William Boss then built one at this point, 
which was owned in 1859 by Stephen Gates, and in 1870 by Elijah N". 
Wilson. It ceased to be operated in 1879, when Mr. Wilson removed 
to California. In the same vicinity Isaac Adams used to have a chair 
factory. 

The southwest quarter of Bangor was owned at an early day by Asahel 
Bacon of New Haven, Conn., and after his death a large part of the 
tract was purchased in 1842 by his grandson, Charles C. Whittelsey, 
then of Boxbury, Conn., and subsequently one of the foremost business 
men in Malone. A grist mill and saw mill were erected, though by 
whom is not ascertainable with certainty, but as Charles, a son of Asahel, 
looked after his father's interests here prior to Mr. Whittelsey 's owner- 
ship, it is believed that, acting for the father, he was the builder. Mt. 
Whittelsey sold the mills and a part of the land to Charles Bacon in 
1851, and the latter sold in 1863 to Wells S. Dickinson and Edwin L. 
Meigs. The property next passed in 1870 to Bobert Dnnlop. There 
are no mills there now, they having burned in 1883, and at its busiest 



160 History of Franklin County 

the settlement comprised only the mills, a shoe shop and a few houses. 
The locality still goes by the name of Baconville, and the cross highway 
leading to it as the Bacon road. 

A half mile or so west, on the same stream, there used to be a saw 
mill owned by Levi Orton, and afterward by E. and F. Orton, which 
I think was built by John L. Rowley. 

A mile and a half west of West Bangor the "Half -Way House " (so 
called because it was approximately midway between Plattsburgh and 
Ogdensburg) was kept in stage-coach times by James Lawrence, and 
then by Leonard Fish. It was a commodious structure, painted red, 
on the north side of the turnpike, and was famous for a long time for 
its fine table of good home cookery and also as a favorite resort for 
large and jolly dancing parties. The house was burned in 1883. Still 
another stage-coach tavern in the same vicinity, dating from about 
1836 or 1837, was that kept by Willard Jepherson or Jefferson, a mile 
west from Fish's. 

North Bangor was incorporated as a village in 1914, and then had 
a population of 307. It has electric lights, the current for which is 
transmitted from Malone. It lies near the north and south center of the 
town, but only about a mile from the Malone town line. The Rutland 
railroad runs through Bangor from east to west about a half a mile 
north of this village, which it has doubtless been as helpful in building 
up as any other one factor. When the road was built all of the imme- 
diate country lying to the north of the line was a dense forest, and 
George H. Stevens sold from it a thousand cords of wood, delivered at 
the station, at five shillings (63%c.) per cord. It cost him a quarter 
of a dollar per cord for the chopping, and the same price for hauling, 
so that his return for stumpage was barely a shilling per cord, though 
something should be added to his meagre profit account by reason of 
the fact that the chopping and hauling were paid for in merchandise 
from his store. 

Nearly sixty years ago, when Baker Stevens was postmaster and 
North Bergen mail used to come to North Bangor and vice versa, Mr. 
Stevens suggested a change in the name of the office in the hope of 
curing such confusion. Having only recently returned from California, 
where there is a town called Amador, he proposed that name for the 
North Bangor office, and the department approved. But when Elijah 
A. Hyde became postmaster a few years later the name North Bangor 
was resumed. 



Bangor 161 

North Bangor's only manufacturing industries are the condensary 
and creamery combined and Fred M. Johnson's feed mill, which was 
built by Wm. H. Plumb for a shingle mill, and changed by George 
Taylor into a feed mill. 

The place merits particular mention as the center from which fruit 
raising throughout the county was largely developed by the enthusiasm 
and efforts of Elijah A. Hyde, who demonstrated that certain varieties 
of choice apples, pears and grapes could be grown here successfully, and 
who induced the planting of thousands of trees and vines. William H. 
Plumb now has an orchard here of three thousand five hundred thrifty 
apple and pear trees, the largest in the county, and producing fine 
fruit. 

Particulars of early life at North Bangor are even more difficult to 
gather at this day than similar data for Bangor and West Bangor. 
Benjamin Seeley, locating a mile east of the " Corners," evidently 
remained for only a short time, inasmuch as in 1814 he had become a 
resident of Malone, and in that year deeded to the supervisors of the 
county the land on which the county buildings are now established. 
While in Bangor he is said to have opened his house for the accommoda- 
tion of settlers and of those journeying to points farther west. Joseph 
Plumb passed the remaining days of his life there, dying in 1837. He also 
carried on a sort of hotel business upon much the same lines as Mr. 
Seeley had done, and built and operated both a distillery and a tan- 
nery. He became the agent for the sale of the Bangor lands of McCor- 
mick, 0. A. Brodie and Bacon, and was succeeded in this capacity by 
his son William. The latter and one of the Barnums became mighty 
hunters, and added appreciably to their usual earnings by killing 
wolves and panthers for the bounties. The Plumb farm aggregated 
eight hundred or a thousand acres, and what remains of it is now 
divided between William H. and Howard Plumb. 

The stage route from Plattsburgh to Ogdensburg had been at first 
through Bangor and West Bangor, which fact led to a development in 
these places before North Bangor began to find itself. But when the 
route was changed to the north road, business other than farming began 
to be prosecuted. 

The first person professing to keep a real hotel at North Bangor was 
Timothy Barnes, and the house, small and insignificant, stood on the 
north side of the highway on the first lot west of the Corners. George 
H. Stevens kept it after the death of Mr. Barnes. The next landlord 

6 



162 History of Franklin County 

was Abel Harvey, who in 1842 or 1843 built the hotel which stood for 
fifty-odd years on the corner where Hotel Eldred now is, and ran it 
for a good many years. Later landlords at this stand have been many, 
and include Thomas Barney, Jonas and William H. Barney, Daniel 
Guernsey, George Doty, Silas Cornish, S. C. Horrigan, Orson Carpen- 
ter, C. L. Hazen, Orrin Harris, Clark Coffrin, William B. Steenberge, 
Hiram Doty, E. K. Baxter, Billy Orr, Wash. Smith, Judson Geer, F. D. 
Eich, D. McGiveny and Steve Fosburg. During the latter's tenancy in 
1896 or 1897 the building burned, after which the site was bought by 
Charles T. Eldred, and in 1899 a three-story structure erected, the 
landlords in which have been Mr. Eldred, Fred Eldred, E. A. Eich, 
Ernest Macomber, Alfred F. Brockway and Cecil I. Whitcomb. Mr. 
Whitcomb is the present proprietor. 

Stores at North Bangor appear not to have been many, nor to date 
to very early times. The earliest merchant so far as now ascertainable 
was George H. Stevens, whose store was next east of the Corners. J. D. 
("Den.") Fisk was there at about the same time, and these were fol- 
lowed by Baker, Henry and Clinton Stevens and Solon Beynolds. The 
Stevens brothers, except Henry, afterward became residents of Malone, 
George H. coming here as sheriff. Mr. Fisk removed eventually to 
New York, and prospered there. The Stevens experience proved that 
though Bangor lacked in large manufactories it was an exceptionally 
good trading point, because of the general excellence of its lands and. 
the superior quality of its citizenry. Baker Stevens, who was a mer- 
chant here from 1855 to 1865, doing a credit business, told me that in 
the entire ten years he lost less than two hundred dollars in bad 
accounts. Other merchants have been John L. Eowley, Mathias Stan- 
ley, P. J. Stickle, William H. Hyde in partnership with Mr. Eeynolds, 

Elijah A. Hyde and Eansom, Harrison Lee, James S. 

Lytle and Sons, W. H. Plumb, William B. Steenberge, Charles T. 
Eldred, Leon Chapin and Herbert Burr. The Patrons of Industry also 
had a store for four or five years prior to 1903. The present merchants 
are Fred W. McKenzie and Alfred Brockway, Orville S. Ehoades, L. E. 
Farrington and Eobert Todd, and Fred M. Johnson, dealer in flour, 
feed and agricultural implements. There are also a meat market, kept 
by Fred Murphy, John B. Mallette's blacksmith shop, Herbert Griffin's 
marble works, and W. A. McLennan's undertaking rooms. The Masons 
have a hall of their own here, the lower floor of which is rented to the 
town for a town hall. 

A dry saw mill (so called because the brook was small and the power 



Bangor 163 

insufficient) was built a mile and a half west of the Corners on the 
main road, by Benjamin Walker, probably eighty or ninety years ago. 
It was a small affair and disappeared in the early forties. 

Cooks Corners, partly in Fort Covington, lies along the northern 
border. In the part which is in Bangor there are perhaps a dozen 
dwelling houses and one store, kept by Joseph Taillon. Earlier pro- 
prietors were George Washburne, Samuel Southworth, Samuel Vidger 
and Joe Labarge. 

In this neighborhood during the night of October 15, 1881, when 
there was a fierce wind, a house owned by James Riley and occupied by 
him and John McCarthy and family, caught fire, and before the 
inmates, numbering twelve persons, were awakened they were hemmed 
in by the flames. Mr. Eiley and his brother, Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy, 
Mr. McCarthy's father and three of the children managed to fight their 
way out, though not without serious hurts, but four of the McCarthy 
boys in one of the chambers were burned to death. 

Another Cooks Corners incident of a different character created a 
good deal of excitement and speculation in 1887. Michael McCaffrey, 
a resident of good character and of generally accepted veracity, claimed 
to have had repeated dreams, in which a British officer appeared to 
him, stating that he had been killed by the Indians, and directing 
McCaffrey to dig at a pine stump on the premises for treasure buried 
by the officer between flat stones. McCaffrey represented that after a 
time he obeyed, and that, precisely as had been predicted, he found the 
stones, and between them a certificate of indebtedness for four thousand 
pounds, which purported to have been issued by the Bank of England, 
and to be payable by it on demand with interest. Eev. Frank \ T . 
Jewett, a native of the vicinity and at the time a professor in the State 
normal school at Fredonia, examined into the matter as thoroughly as 
possible, and satisfied himself that the find had been made as McCaffrey 
stated and that the certificate was valid and genuine. Mr. Jewett placed 
the matter for McCaffrey in the hands of New York city attorneys for 
collection, but nothing has ever been realized on it. Faith in the truth- 
fulness of McCaffrey's story still prevails among his neighbors. Mr. 
Jewett himself visited London, and had an interview with the bank 
officials, who gave as excuse for not honoring the certificate that time 
had made the writing so faint as to make identification impossible. 

Including the condensary at North Bangor, there are two creameries 
in the town, and formerly there were five others, besides the one on the 



164 History of Franklin County 

north road, which was really a Bangor enterprise, though located just 
across the town line in Malone. It was built in 1870 by Lytle Bros., 
and was the first in the county. 

A creamery in the southeastern part of the town, originally a co-oper- 
ative concern, but owned later by Isaac Carpenter, then by Gaius A. 
Lane, and finally by Fred Lawrence, was torn down a few years ago. 
Still another, built by Joe Labarge at Cooks Corners in 1888, was 
afterward run by 0. Harrington and used as a skimming station for 
the condensary. It was torn down six or eight years ago. The cream- 
ery at Bangor, owned by Frank L. Allen of Springfield, Mass., and 
closed down at least temporarily in 1917, was originally a cheese fac- 
tory, built and operated for a few years on the co-operative plan. It 
burned, and in 1877 was rebuilt by Alexander S. Knapp, and operated 
by him, and then by W. B. Burr. Besides making butter when it was 
operated by Mr. Allen it turned out a large product of cottage cheese 
in a crude form, which was shipped to New England cities to be 
seasoned and finished for market. It is now operated by another party 
as a cheese factory. The creamery at West Bangor, formerly owned 
by G. L. Donaldson, and then by Barber & Fish, passed to the control 
of non-resident interests, and made fancy Italian cheese in 1917. The 
operators failed with several thousand dollars owing to farmers, 'and the 
plant is now idle. When it was run by Barber & Fish as a creamery 
it made caseine as a by-product. Caseine is used as a " binder " for 
cheap paints, as a " filler " for wood and heavy fabrics, for buttons and 
billiard balls, and for sizing paper, to which it gives a smooth finish. 
There are two creameries between North Bangor and Brushton; one 
owned by George and Charles Walker, and the other by Frank Aldrich. 
The Walker creamery closed in 1917. 

How the present product of butter in Bangor, and indeed in tbe county 
as a whole, compares with the output of a few years ago is not deter- 
minable accurately except by a comprehensive investigation which I have 
not found it feasible to undertake; but the general consensus of what 
must be regarded as authoritative opinion is that it is very much 
smaller. Twenty-five years ago there were nearly thirty thousand milch 
cows in the county, and to-day the number is only about a thousand 
larger. But in almost every town the number of creameries has dimin- 
ished, and the receipts of milk at most of those which are still in opera- 
tion have fallen off generally. In addition, the business of shipping 
milk and cream to New York and other cities is altogether new within 



Bangor 165 

the past eight or ten years, and the quantity so withdrawn from butter 
making is very great. The butter product of Bangor in creameries in 
1904 was reported to the State department of agriculture as having 
been 711,000 pounds, which was nearly fifty per cent, more than 
Malone's, and double the quantity made in any other of the towns of 
the county. With only a single creamery now in operation, it is doubted 
if the butter product of the town can be more than an eighth of what 
it once was. However, the average butter-fat yield of the cows now 
kept is probably at least a quarter more than it was a few years ago, 
due to the process that is systematically going on of weeding out 
from the herds the poorer animals. Cow-testing associations are doing 
a great work in this regard, and more and more farmers ought to join 
them. Along that line lies the way to make dairying more profitable, 
and progressiveness should characterize farming operations as well as 
other enterprises. Just how much this may mean to a farmer is seen 
in the result reported from one series of tests, wherein the ten best 
cows showed four times the production of the ten poorest, all in herds 
from which the poorest cows had already been eliminated. The farmer 
who hopes to realize results will not remain blind to the importance of 
having such tests made, nor hesitate in acting upon them. 

The condensary at North Bangor was built in 1904, and is owned 
by O. Harrington of that place and Tait Brothers of Springfield, Mass. 
Three gallons of milk are required to make one of condensed. The full 
milk is used in a part of the product, while in making other brands, 
used principally in confectionery, a part of the cream is first taken out. 
Both the sweetened and the unsweetened are made. The former is 
shipped in barrels, and the latter, which is used in making ice-cream, 
goes to market in forty-gallon cans. The condensary also ships plain 
cream at times, and occasionally makes butter. All shipped cream is 
pasteurized, which not only removes the impurities, but gives it better 
keeping qualities. 

Perhaps the most notable distinction that attaches to Bangor is that 
the invention of one of its citizens, Benjamin F. Jewett, revolutionized 
the business of dairying. Until 1870 each farm had made its own 
butter, the milk being set in small pans, the care of which entailed 
unspeakable drudgery, with results not at all satisfactory. Mr. Jewett 
had pondered speculatively and theoretically from boyhood the general 
idea underlying his new pan, and after he began actual experiment was 
four years in perfecting his invention. His principal aim was to 



166 History of Franklin County 

produce a pan which would prevent the premature souring and thickening 
of the milk in hot weather, and keep the milk sweet long enough for the 
cream to rise. This was to be accomplished by having cold water con- 
stantly under the milk. The pan as put upon the market had a double 
bottom, the outer skin divided into compartments or channels which 
opened into each other at alternate ends, in order to assure thorough 
circulation of the water. There were incidental features to make it 
easy to draw off the milk after skimming, for rinsing, etc. The first of 
these pans used in a co-operative creamery was installed in a factory 
by Lytle Brothers in Malone, near North Bangor, and soon afterward 
Lucius B. Townsend and William H. Hyde began their manufacture in 
large quantities at Malone. The results of their use were to lighten 
labor on the farm, to increase largely the average quantity of butter 
realized from a given quantity of milk, to make a better product, and 
to command a better price for it. In the ensuing five years more than 
twenty creameries were built in Franklin county, and the Jewett pan 
installed in them. In the period from 1870 to 1900 the number of 
dairy cows in the county increased from about seventeen thousand to 
nearly thirty thousand. Improved pans having come into use and 
separators having followed, the Jewett pan is no longer made, but it 
accomplished a magnificent work, and every dairyman and dairyman's 
wife and daughters owe much to it for the labor that they have been 
saved, and for the larger earnings that their cows have made. 

The story of Bangor's town houses is obscure and curious. A town 
meeting in 1830 voted to build, appropriated the poor moneys in the 
hands of the overseers for the purpose, and created a committee com- 
posed of residents of other towns to select a site. Such committee 
recommended that the house be located on a lot near the Powell Wilson 
place, but the people on the north and south roads were disposed then 
as now, each to magnify their own claims and to gain advantage over 
the other. Consequently the town repudiated the committee's finding, 
and after holding three other town meetings for consideration of the 
question decided to have two houses — one on the north and one on the 
south road, with the use thereof to be free to all religious societies in 
proportion to the amount that each should contribute to the building 
funds. Individuals contributed their labor to the work of erection, and 
thus each felt that he had an individual share in ownership of them. 
The house on the south road, at West Bangor, is of stone, and in its 
face is set a tablet with the inscription, " Town House, erected in 



Bangor 167 

1835." The other is now the so-called union church at North Bangor, 
which was remodeled in 1873 at a cost of $5,000. Strangely enough, 
there is no record in the County Clerk's office vesting title to the latter 
lot in the town, nor any showing relinquishment of rights by the town 
in either lot to the churches now in possession with actual or assumed 
ownership. There is, however, record of the conveyance of the town house 
site at West Bangor by Asahel Bacon in 1829 for twelve dollars and a 
half, and also by C. C. Whittelsey to the Union Church Society in 
1860, and a quitclaim of same by William L. Taylor and Henry Storm 
in 1887, but none showing title to the town house at North Bangor in 
any church. Few of the younger generation have been aware until 
recently that the town had ever had any town house at all, though older 
men are able to recall uncertainly that forty or fifty years ago the tax- 
payers concluded that the upkeep of the halls was greater than the cosf 
of renting would be, and so voted to relinquish their interest in them. 
It would be proper business for both town and churches to straighten 
out the matter of record if practicable. 

North Bangor Lodge No. 556, F. and A. M., dates from 1865, and 
has over one hundred members. It owns its lodge building, which i3 
at North Bangor, and a part of which the town occupies for its records 
and for a polling place. 

Bangor organized a Grand Army Post in 1883, with over a hundred 
members. It was named in honor of William Dutton, one of the 
colonels of the 98th regiment. The number of veterans in the town 
having become small, the organization was permitted to lapse in 1891. 

Bangor Grange, No. 967, was organized in 1898, has about two hun- 
dred and fifty members, and owns the building in which its hall is 
located — renting the ground floor for commercial uses. 

Bev. James Erwin, born in Fort Covington in 1813, and a preacher 
at the age of sixteen years, says in his " Eeminiscences of a Circuit 
Eider," that " Barzilia Willey, James Covel, Jonathan Newman, Wil- 
liam Case, Isaac Puffer and others carried the gospel through the val- 
leys of St. Lawrence and Franklin counties from the year 1800," and, 
therefore, unless there are actual records, it would be presumptuous to 
assert positively that any known religious meeting in any Franklin 
county town was the first held therein, for the Methodists especially, 
and the Presbyterians only in less degree, were given to invasion of 
every locality as soon as it had inhabitants in any appreciable number. 
It is probable that the latter were first in the field in Bangor. The 



168 History of Franklin County 

early records of the church of this denomination were lost by fire a few 
years ago, but William M. Hinman, the then clerk, remembers dis- 
tinctly that they recited that the church was organized in a barn in 
1809, which other authority says was owned by Constant Southworth, 
near Cooks Corners, and that preaching had been had the year before 
by Rev. Alexander Proudfoot of Salem, Washington county, who was 
active in that period in establishing United Presbyterian churches in 
Northern New York, though the actual organization in Bangor was by 
Eev. Jacob Hart of Constable and Eev. Ashbel Parmelee of Malone. 
Actual incorporation was effected February 9, 1833, as the " First 
Congregational Church of Bangor," though the society's own records 
give the date of organization as June 8, 1826. The seeming contradic- 
tion in dates is explained by some members of the society by attributing 
to 1826 the action which changed the church from Presbyterian to 
Congregational instead of its having reference to the original organiza- 
tion. A church edifice was erected at South Bangor in 1842, meetings 
in that part of the town having been held previously in barns or in the 
school house. At North Bangor and at West Bangor the society has 
had the use of one or the other of the two town houses since about 1835, 
and of late years practically the exclusive use of the one at the former 
place. The church enrolled in 1827 with the Presbytery of Champlain 
as a Presbyterian church, but for a long time now has been incorporated 
as Congregational with the St. Lawrence and Black Eiver Association. 
It has a parsonage at Bangor, built in 1883, and services are held every 
Sunday at that place and at North Bangor, and on every alternate Sun- 
day in the union church at West Bangor — a single pastor serving all 
three stations. 

The Christian sect is said by Hough to have been organized in 1818 
by Elder Uriah Smith and James Spooner. For a long time it was the 
strongest religious body in that section, if not in the town as a whole. 
At West Bangor it included until sixty years ago nearly every inhabitant. 
February 10, 1860, the Christians joined with the Methodists, Uni- 
versalists, Presbyterians and Baptists in forming the " Union Society 
of West Bangor," each denomination having one trustee, and each to 
" have the privilege of occupying the meeting house in proportion as 
they have paid in building or shall pay in repairing the same." Though 
there appear to have been individuals of both the Universalist and 
Baptist faiths in the vicinity of West Bangor, neither of these denomi- 
nations ever had a distinctive organization there except as perhaps they 



Bangor 169 

may have effected informal associations incidental to joining in the 
Union Church movement. Nor, I think, did either ever have a settled 
pastor, but were served irregularly and infrequently by clergy of their 
respective denominations from Malone. The members of the Christian 
organization have died out very largely, or have been absorbed by the 
Adventists — the society holding no services now and having had no 
settled pastor since about 1868. 

While the first Methodist Episcopal church in Bangor was not incor- 
porated until 1851, and the South Bangor church of that denomination 
not until 1860, they nevertheless date considerably earlier, for the con- 
ference records show that a regular ministerial appointment to the town 
was made by that body as early as 1835, and that such appointments 
have continued unbrokenly every year since; and undoubtedly Metho- 
dist services were held here long before by circuit riders, as in 1837 the 
charge was reported to the conference as having one hundred and sixty- 
five members. The society has two church edifices besides its share in 
the one at West Bangor. Its house of worship at North Bangor was 
built in 1903, and a curiously misleading inscription appears on its 
cornerstone, the implication of which is that the entire edifice was a 
gift by the persons whose names are graven on the stone, whereas they 
gave the stone only. Prior to the erection of this church the old town 
hall had been used alternately with the Congregationalists. The 
church at Bangor was built in 1856, meetings there having been held 
previously in the school house. Services are held each Sunday both at 
North Bangor and at Bangor, and on alternate Sundays at West Bangor. 
There is one pastor for the three places. The membership at West 
Bangor is eighteen, at Bangor forty-four, and at North Bangor one 
hundred and fifty-nine. The parsonage is at North Bangor. An 
unfortunate and acrimonious schism in the church occurred thirty 
years ago, growing out of the adherence of a part of the members to 
Rev. C. N. Capron, who was tried by the conference in 1883 while he 
was pastor here, the charges against him having been falsehood, fraud 
and drinking, and the judgment by conference having been that he be 
suspended. Nevertheless he and his friends continued to hold possession 
of at least one of the church edifices and the parsonage until an order 
was issued out of the supreme court restraining Mr. Capron from fur- 
ther occupancy. The suit was settled later by the Capron faction sur- 
rendering the property, and the breach was long ago healed. 

The French Presbyterian church did not long endure. In 1859 



170 History of Franklin County 

Henry Morrell of Ogdensburg, but previously of Bangor, where he had 
served as the church's minister, deeded a lot and the meeting house 
thereon, situate on the Taylor road, to Jacob Jefferson Johnson (a 
negro), Peter Labell and Francis d-ravell as trustees of the society in 
question. The premises were sold to the late Judge Paddock in 1864, 
and by him in the same year to the First Seventh Day Adventist 
Church, of which Horace W. Lawrence was the leader. This latter 
sect had had followers in the town for twenty years or more, Millerism 
having had a considerable vogue there when the second coming of 
Christ was so implicitly expected in 1843. The Adventist church 
organization is still maintained. 

According to the county clerk's records Joshua Dickinson deeded a 
plot of ground in 1851 to Anderson Wilson, Richard King and Thomson 
Graves as trustees of the First Episcopal Church of Bangor, but as no 
such organization is remembered by old residents as ever having had an 
existence, and as at the time stated the gentlemen named were trustees 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Bangor, it is altogether probable 
that the record is erroneous, the word " Methodist " having been inad- 
vertently omitted either in the original or in its transcription. More- 
over, the lot deeded was occupied for a time by the Methodists for a 
parsonage. 

St. Mark's Church at West Bangor was a mission of St. Mark's of 
Malone, and was the outgrowth of a feeble movement by the few 
Episcopalians of the place for an organized existence. These had held 
services occasionally in the stone town house or union church until 
crowded out of its use by the stronger denominations, and then in a 
hall over Dr. Darling's store. A church edifice was built in 1876, and 
for several years the Episcopalian rectors at Malone officiated in it 
irregularly. The organization no longer exists. 

Saint Augustine's Church, Bangor (Roman Catholic), was incorpo- 
rated in 1887, and has a church building at North Bangor, erected in 
1890 on the cross road, south of the corners, and afterward moved to 
its present location on the highway leading to Malone. It has a mem- 
bership of over one hundred families. 

The St. Mark's church building was sold in 1902 by the heirs of Dr. 
Darling to St. Edward's Church (Roman Catholic), which continues 
to occupy it. It includes ninety-two families, and is served by the 
rector of Saint Augustine's Church at North Bangor. 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church of the Bangor and Burke circuit 



Bangor 171 

(now named the First Wesleyan Church and Society) is at Cook's 
Corners, and was organized in 1850 through the efforts of Rev. Joseph 
Grinnell. The circuit originally included not only the towns named, 
but also Sand Street in Westville, Fort Covington Center, South Bom- 
bay, Wolf Swamp, Reach's school house in Moira, Egypt, Canaan, the 
Biley district in Bangor and Coal Hill in Westville: and a single pastor 
served them all until about 1871. The church building at Cook's 
Corners was erected in 1871, and is just over the town line in Fort 
Covington. Before the church was built services were held in the school 
house. The Cook's Corners Society is almost, or quite, the only sur- 
viving Wesleyan organization of the considerable number that at one 
time existed in the county. 

Spiritualism gained a considerable hold fifty-odd years ago in the 
Xorth Bangor section, and at least two persons there obsessed by it 
became insane. 

George Mott, an upright and respected farmer, had the distinction 
of being the last Democrat to represent Franklin county in the Assembly, 
having been elected by 258 plurality in a triangular contest in 1856 
over Bev. Andrew M. Millar (Bep.) of Chateaugay and Charles Bussell 
(Knownothing) of Bombay. A son of Mr. Mott (D. Warren) was a 
student at Franklin Academy forty-odd years ago, studied medicine, 
was admitted a practitioner, and removed to California, where he has 
had a large measure of success, both professionally and politically. Dr. 
Mott represents his district in the California Senate. 



CHAPTER VI 
BELLMONT 

The town of Bellmont was erected from Chateaugay March 25, 1833, 
and then included all of the territory now comprising the town of 
Franklin. In 1838 its boundaries were extended by annexation of a 
strip a mile wide extending across the north end of the town, which 
was detached from Chateaugay. The town was named for William 
Bell, of the city of New York, who had been an employee of William 
Constable in the latter's shipping enterprises, and afterward was him- 
self a merchant. At about the close of the eighteenth century Mr. Bell 
had acquired, with others, title to practically all of the lands in the 
northern part of the town, Mr. Bell's portion comprising about eight 
thousand acres, and twenty-odd years later he was accustomed to spend 
his summers on the property. He must have been a man of considerable 
means for that day, because by his will there were specific legacies of 
money amounting to nearly twenty thousand dollars, while the residue 
of the estate, other than realty, was bequeathed to a relative who sup- 
posedly would be richly remembered. Mr. Bell died in 1841. 

The town was of slow development, and even yet is mostly wilder- 
ness, though largely denuded. Generally the soil is neither rich nor 
deep, and its surface, rocky and mountainous, does not lend itself to 
profitable agriculture. Even the lumbering and other industrial enter- 
prises that have been prosecuted did not tend particularly to populate 
the town permanently, nor to enrich it. Miles upon miles of its forest 
area were destroyed for conversion into charcoal, and though, first and 
last, it has had many sawmills, most of them were small, and much of 
the timber cut within its borders went to mills elsewhere for manu- 
facture. Neither have its many waters been utilized extensively, as in 
other localities, for summer resort business, except that Lower Chateau- 
gay Lake has not been altogether neglected, and except also that in the 
western part of the town in comparatively recent years Indian Lake 
and Mountain View have had many camps built upon their shores. 
Mountain View (formerly known as State Dam, a dam having been 
built upon the river there by the State in 1855 or 1856) was once one 
of the most prolific trout waters in the Adirondacks, and Indian Lake 

[172] 



Bellmont 173 

(Bound Pond) was a famous hunting resort. One of the old guides 
used to tell that he once counted twenty-seven carcasses of deer piled at 
a single point on its shores, stripped of their hides, and the meat left 
to rot. Mountain View and Indian Lake are in close proximity, and 
together have perhaps a hundred cottages. In addition, there are at 
the former place an all-the-year-around population of forty to fifty, 
with a school house, a Eoman Catholic church, a Protestant church, two 
hotels, two stores, and a number of boarding houses. An unofficial 
enumeration of the people in cottages and camps, including permanent 
residents, on one day in July, 1915, listed eight hundred and ten. 
Lower Chateaugay Lake, a fine sheet of water, and easily reached from 
Chateaugay, formerly had two small hotels, and now has one, the 
Banner House, formerly conducted by J. S. Kirby and now by F. H. 
Adams, which attracts a considerable number of guests, and has a 
deserved popularity. A few cottages have been built there recently. 
But Bagged Lake, Ingraham Pond and other waters in the town have 
only one or two summer camps each. Bagged Lake formerly had a 
small hotel, kept by J. W. Pond. The Banner House was formerly the 
Bellows House, which originally was a mere shack. Jonathan Bellows 
located in Constable more than a hundred years ago, and laid out a 
trapper's line from there to Chateaugay Lake.. In place of the shack 
which he first occupied at the latter point he built a comfortable house, 
which his son, Lewis, subsequently enlarged and conducted as a hotel 
for a good many years. Guests from Montreal began to visit the place 
in appreciable numbers in 1837 or 1838, and after the railroad from 
Bouses Point to Ogdensburg was built the business increased notably. 
The locality was then known colloquially as the " Shategee Woods," 
and, except for the Saranacs, was about the only Adirondack point that 
outsiders sought in Franklin county. The Bellows property was sold 
in 1891, renovated and enlarged, and has since been known as the 
Banner House. A son of Lewis Bellows (Millard F.) still lives in 
Bellmont, and a daughter is Mrs. N~. Monroe Marshall of Malone. 

So far as I know, Bellmont is the only town in Franklin county for 
which the Legislature made special provision to induce settlement. In 
1822 an act was passed which provided for granting one lot in town- 
ship number ten, Old Military Tract (now in Franklin), to each and 
every person who within five years should clear and fence fifteen acres 
of such lot, erect thereon a habitable dwelling, and be there settled with 
his family; and also three lots to each and every person who within 



174 History of Franklin County 

four years should erect and put in operation one good and sufficient 
grist mill within said township, and one lot to each and every person 
who should erect and put in operation one good and sufficient sawmill. 

Among the early settlers in the eastern part of the town were Samuel 
C. Drew, Enoch and Paul Merrill, John Sanborn, John B. and Joseph 
H. Jackson, Jacob and John Otis, Jonathan Bellows, John D. Miles, 
Joseph, Jonathan and Noah Estabrooks and Eoswell A. Weed — all 
locating at or near the site of the present hamlet of Chateaugay Lake. 
Mr. Drew was probably the first of these, in 1816, though Mr. Sanborn 
claimed to have preceded him, and sought to have the town called San- 
borntown on this account. Some of Mr. Drew's descendants are now 
located in New York city, where they have made a business of moving 
large buildings, and have accumulated handsome fortunes. Mr. Drew 
came from New Hampshire, as also did several others of those named, 
including the Merrills. W. H. J. Drew, who became the close friend 
of Mr. Bell, was the first white male child born in the town. He was 
at one time school commissioner, and his grave is on the old homestead 
on the west side of Chateaugay Lake. The Merrills, or their descend- 
ants, conducted a small hotel at the foot of Lower Chateaugay Lake, 
and were famous fishermen with nets, and but for their operations and 
the use of dynamite afterward by miners at Lyon Mountain the waters 
thereabout would undoubtedly contain a more abundant supply of 
trout and whitefish. Of these latter, which are one of the finest of pan- 
fish, Mr. Merrill used to bring was'on loads to Malone something over 
forty years ago, and mixed with them a considerable proportion of lake 
trout, Mr. Merrill himself was honestly persuaded that net fishing 
really bettered the supply of trout, as it removed from the lake the 
large fish which prey upon the small fry and eat the spawn. 

Gates Hoit, of Chateaugay, representing nonresident landowners, 
built the first sawmill in the town in 1822 or earlier, and it was soon 
afterward sold to John B. Jackson (afterward wood agent for the 
0. & L. C. E. B, for many years), who, a little later, himself built a 
grist mill nearby, the stones for which were cut from native boulders 
by John D. Mi]es. Mr. Miles was one of the most estimable citizens 
that Bellmont ever had. He acquired an interest in the Jackson mills. 
A grandson still resides in the town. Mr. "Weed took over the Jackson 
and Miles mills and acquired other properties in considerable amounts, 
opening a hotel and enlarging the mills. A considerable part of the 
product of the sawmill was hauled forty miles to Champlain for Meigs 



Bellmont 175 

& Wead of Malone. Mr. Weed was prominent in all of the town's 
affairs until 1854, when he sold the mills to a Mr. Hughes of Ver- 
gennes, Vt., and removed to Plattshurgh. He was the father of Hon. 
Smith M. Weed, of Plattshurgh, who joined with others almost half a 
century afterward to establish at the place of his birth the greatest 
industry that the town ever possessed, if not the largest ever operated 
in the county. Another son was William B. Weed, who was a cavalry 
captain under Kilpatrick in the civil war, and then went to Australia, 
where he is supposed to have been murdered. Mr. Hughes did an 
extensive business for a time, but failed, when the mill was acquired by 
Erastus Meade and George W. Palmer, of Plattshurgh. Mr. Palmer 
withdrawing after a year or two, Samuel F. A 7 ilas took over his interest, 
and in 1869 or 1870 Gilbert L. Havens leased the mill and ran it for a 
year or two. Joseph Clark built and operated a sawmill in the same 
vicinity in 1848. 

Even earlier than 1810 William Bailey, then residing at Chateaugay, 
dug iron ore near Chateaugay Lake until the deposit was exhausted, 
and manufactured it at High Falls on the Clrateaugay river. In 1826 
Jonathan Stearns, of Malone, leased and worked mineral lands in the 
same vicinity until the supply failed, and about 1875 Lewis H. Bellows 
and Edgar Keeler, of Chateaugay, located and worked an iron mine 
near the Bellows House, drawing the ore to Irona. This mine was sub- 
sequently worked by other parties also, and two separators were built in 
the vicinity for handling the ore. 

The first store at Chateaugay Lake was built by John B. Jackson and 
Dr. Hiram Paddock, of Chateaugay, the business of which was managed 
by Elias Beman, of Chateaugay, who operated an ashery also. Other 
early merchants here were Charles Backus and Nahum Whipple, the 
latter of Malone. In 1869 Meade & Vilas erected a large store build- 
ing, and conducted a mercantile business in connection with their 
lumbering operations. 

Settlement at Brainardsville, a mile down the river, was later, and 
in a paper read by Mr. 0. F. Chase before the Historical Society a few 
years ago it was stated that even as late as 1843 bear, lynx, wolves and 
panthers were abundant in the neighborhood. The first sawmill here 
was built by a man named Chamberlain, and was sold to Abel H. 
Miller, then of Malone ; then to Fisk & Van Allen of Albany, for whom 
James Coates looked after the operating; then, in 1854, to Lawrence 
Brainard of St. Albans, Vt., who enlarged it, and also built a grist 



176 History of Franklin County 

mill and a number of houses. Gilbert L. Havens was his resident 
manager, and in 1861 bought the properties and operated them exten- 
sively until he failed a dozen years later, when he removed to Colorado. 
He was a hustling, affable gentleman, and loomed large in the politics 
of the town. Upon his failure Mr. Brainard came again into possession, 
and resumed operations. In 1882, the mills having been destroyed, the 
sites and water powers were sold to John Hoy, who built and operated 
a grist mill, afterward adding to it a sawmill. The latter is still 
operated by the Hoy family, but on a smaller scale than of old. In 
1850 Alanson Eoberts of Chateaugay built an ashery, and employed a 
man named Cromp to run it. The place thus came to be called Cromp- 
ville, but five years later, when the first post-office was established and 
called Brainardsville, the hamlet assumed that name also. Smith 
Payne was the first postmaster. At about this time Edwin Smith built 
and ran a starch factory here, which was afterward run by William S. 
Douglas of Chateaugay, and then by others until within a few years. 
There was also a sawmill on the brook, built by George Miller. 

Brainardsville's first school was located to the east of the present 
hamlet, on the farm of John Kenison, now owned by Bobert Arnold, a 
half mile from the Clinton county line. Miss Eliza Merrill, daughter 
of Paul, was its first teacher, and Miss Olive Miles (afterward Mrs. 
Wm. P. Cantwell of Malone) the second. But the population began to 
center farther west, and this school was abandoned. A new school 
house was built at Brainardsville in 1854. S. F. Storrs, who was reputed 
to have taught school for sixty terms, was one of the first teachers there. 

Early merchants were Lawrence Brainard, Matt. J. Reynolds, G. L. 
Havens, Oliver Young and 0. F. Chase & Co. J. S. Kirby succeeded 
Mr. Reynolds, and was himself succeeded by Bennett & English. Jacob 
Taubenheimer and F. M. Hoy were also once in trade at this point. 

Brainardsville consists at present of a small group of dwelling houses, 
a store or two, a sawmill, a creamery, a wheel wright shop, owned by 
W. "W*. Lamberton, that does considerable business, and a Methodist 
church. It has a gravity system of water works, established by private 
enterprise in 1904, which has as takers nearly all of the inhabitants. 

Other early settlers, mostly in the north central part of the town, 
were: John and Alva Orcutt, John Richey, James Barry, George 
Winkley, Smith Bunker, Marcus, Elijah and Charles E.. Heading, Earl 
Howe, James Smith, Joseph, John and William Williamson. The last 
named was accidentally shot and killed by a child in a hotel in Malone 
in 1825. Mr. Howe died in 1884, and he used to tell that at the time 



Bellmont 177 

he located, about 1830, there were only four or five residences, hardly 
more than huts, between Malone and Chateaugay Lake, and that it was 
a twenty hours' trip to Malone and return. Alva Orcutt and sons, 
William C. and Harry P., operated a starch factory (which had been 
built by Meigs & Wead of Malone) and a sawmill near their farm, five 
miles from Malone village, and Mr. Barry, who remained in the town 
only a short time, removed to Malone, and located on the South Bangor 
road. He was the father of Mrs. F. D. Kilburn and Mrs. Thomas 
Cantwell of Malone. Mr. Winkley became probably the most important 
farmer in Bellmont, and was a pioneer breeder in this county of fine- 
blooded cattle and Norman horses. The Headings were extensive 
farmers, sturdy men, and leaders in town affairs. Sherman J. Heading, 
son of Elijah, still lives in Bellmont, and is one of its foremost citizens. 
Bunker Hill, which one who has climbed it does not readily forget, was 
named after Smith Bunker, whose farm was located on it. Descendants 
of Mr. Thurber, Mr. Smith and the Williamsons are yet living in the 
town, and are factors in its affairs. A mile or so above the Orcutt mills 
on Trout river Charles Ring and John Monk built a sawmill, which 
they sold in 1854 to Samuel Voorhis from Elmira, and which was run 
later by Shepard & Jackson of Malone, 0. W. Moody and David F. 
Field, Wallace H. Jones and Henry Bassett, John Phipps, and finally 
by Buel L. Foote; and a mile still farther up the stream Daniel Buell 
had a mill — afterward owned by Elisha Hare, then by Miles N. Daw- 
son and Orville Moore of Malone, and still later by Scott G. Boyce, who 
moved it a mile or two west and south, where it still stands. The 
Wayne Lumber Co. of New York city bought it a few months ago, and 
is now operating it, getting out lumber for use in building aeroplanes. 
Gilman Goodwin, who had made a fortune in New York city as a mover 
of buildings, came into the town in the sixties, and built and for several 
years operated a comparatively small mill on Little Trout river, about 
a mile east of the town house, where at a considerably earlier day 
Samuel, and then Benoni, Webb had had a mill. Mr. Goodwin rebuilt 
at a cost said to have amounted to sixty thousand dollars, but the enter- 
prise did not pay, and he returned to New York city. The machinery 
in the mill sold for five thousand dollars in 1882, and was removed to 
Gouverneur. John B. Hart built a mill at about the same time with 
Goodwin for John B. Eoscoe of New York, for whom he operated it for 
several years. Later the property went into the hands of Judge Henry 
A. Paddock of Malone and Mr. Hart, but it never paid. An older mill, 



178 History of Franklin County 

known as the Lewis Tucker mill, had been run at about the point where 
Mr. Hart located. The Goodwin and Hart establishments were both 
steam mills, and each proprietor ran a store in connection with his 
lumbering operations. Charles D. Eood also had a mill forty years ago 
or more on Little Trout river, near the Burke line, which was unprofit- 
able. John Hoy of Brainardsville built a sawmill north of the town 
house, and was fatally injured by the bursting of a flywheel while 
operating it in 1887. 

The frequency with which failure was written across early lumbering 
enterprises is striking and pitiful. The operators had an abundance of 
the best timber of this region almost at the doors of their mills, they 
were unsparing of themselves in respect to hours and arduousness of 
labor, and the wages that they had to pay were low. Nevertheless it was 
only the exceptions who made money. Lumber commanded but a low 
price, the hauls to shipping points were long and over poor roads, and 
in many cases the equipments of mills gave only a small product. Thus 
the forests were wasted, and disappointment and hardship were the 
principal return that the owners realized. 

The following have been merchants in a small way at Bellmont 
Center or vicinity : John Ryan, Edward Graves, Harvey Harrington, 
Earl Howe, Ben. Webb, Frank W. Winkley, Abe Beynolds, Thomas 
Rounds, Edward White and Thomas Beynolds. 

Except for possibly two or three farmers, the first settlers in the 
extreme western part of the town were Charles Ring and John Monk, 
who came from Tompkins county about 1852 to engage in lumbering. 
They erected two mills on the Ingraham stream, and operated them for 
a number of years. A dozen years later both were wrecks. For twenty 
or thirty years Ringville (now known as Owls Head) had little growth, 
but has since become a busy and thriving hamlet, with a railway station, 
shops, stores and a Methodist Episcopal church. Until within a year 
or two Scott G. Boyce had a large sawmill and planing mill here for 
several years. The latter was burned, and the former dismantled and 
removed. Mr. Boyce formerly had a sawmill east of Owls Head also, 
in the vicinity of Ingraham Pond, which mill was built by Cornelius 
and Cass Wilson. Forty years ago, in order to vote, the residents of 
the section had to drive by way of Malone to Bellmont Center, nearly 
eighteen miles; and it was almost impossible even in a stirring cam- 
paign to induce more than a dozen or fifteen to undertake the trip when 
free transportation was furnished and payment made for their so-called 



Bellmont 179 

" day's work." This part of the town has since been made into a 
separate election district, and polls from a hundred to a hundred and 
forty votes. 

Standish lies on the Clinton county border, and mostly in Clinton 
county. There are a furnace and coal kilns there, some parts of which 
are in Bellmont. To the west of Standish are the Middle Kilns, and 
still farther west, near Wolf Pond (about seven miles south of Mountain 
View), are other kilns. Twenty-odd years ago there were at these three 
points a fluctuating scattered population of perhaps two or three hun- 
dred, but, with the decrease of industrial activity there, it has diminished 
considerably. 

A sawmill was built a number of years ago a mile and a half south 
of Mountain View by Edwin R. Bryant, of Syracuse. Its principal 
product seems to have been lawsuits and judgments. The mill was 
burned, and rebuilt by Felix Cardinal. It was continued in operation 
under different ownerships until 1915, when it was dismantled and 
removed farther south. 

The largest sawmills ever operated in Bellmont were those of Gilman 
Goodwin, John P. Hart, Gilbert L. Havens and Scott G. Boyce, none 
of which is now running or in existence. 

Pope, Williams & Company began operations at the hamlet of 
Chateaugay Lake in 1874, to erect the largest and best Catalan forge in 
the world. Its supply of ore was to be obtained from the Lyon Moun- 
tain mine in Clinton county, about eleven miles distant, and its char- 
coal from the adjacent forests. Gardiner Pope was the resident manager 
for the first few years, and was succeeded by John H. Mofhtt, now of 
Plattsburgh, who while in Congress gave place to Lansing Donaldson, 
now of M alone. Senator N. Monroe Marshall was also connected with 
the enterprise, in the store, until he was elected county clerk. In 1877 
the works and property were transferred to the Chateaugay Ore and 
Iron Company, in which LeGrand B. Cannon, of New York, and Hon. 
Andrew Williams and Hon. Smith M. Weed, of Plattsburgh, were 
heavily interested. The Bellmont department of the company had a 
sawmill at the forge, the old Roswell Weed property rebuilt, in which 
the lumber for its forge buildings, shops, houses for its operatives, etc., 
and for planking six miles of highway to the railroad at Chateaugay, 
was sawed. The company maintained a steamboat on the lake for 
towing its barges laden with ore, charcoal and wood to the forge and 
kilns ; its store did a business of a hundred thousand dollars or more 



180 Histoky or Franklin County 

per year; it built scores of dwellings for its employees; thirty thousand 
solid cords of four-foot wood were burned annually in the kilns at the 
forge and at Standish; a million bushels of charcoal were used in a 
year; and it had on its payrolls continuously two or three hundred men 
in this county, besides the choppers and teamsters who worked under 
contract. In times of greatest activity it turned out annually five 
thousand tons of blooms and billets, than which there was none of 
higher grade in the world. Except in periods of business depression, 
and until other methods were discovered and utilized by which iron 
suitable for conversion into steel could be produced at a lower cost, the 
orders for its output outran the capacity of the forge. At one time 
this iron commanded ninety dollars per ton, while now I think that not 
a pound is produced anywhere by the Catalan process, and the iron that 
answers as a substitute for it has sold as low as about thirteen dollars 
a ton. The oost of production varied of course as wages were high or 
low and as improvements were instituted from time to time, but could 
never be brought under thirty-eight dollars per ton. The cost of 
operating was over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Two tons of 
ore made one ton of iron, and the former cost six dollars a ton. The 
business was abandoned in 1893. 

At first thought it seems strange that this vast industry apparently 
added little to Bellmont's population, but it is to be remembered that 
as it developed the mills of Goodwin, Hart and Havens were about 
closing, and thus what was gained in one direction was in part offset 
by losses in others. 

The Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railway enters Bellmont from 
Malone at Chasm Falls, near the northwest corner of the town, and, 
bearing southeasterly for about twelve miles, passes into Franklin near 
Plumadore Pond. The Chateaugay Eailway enters at Standish, on the 
eastern border, and runs southwestwardly seven or eight miles to Wolf 
Pond, where the two lines are almost in contact. The former has 
stations in Bellmont at Owls Head and Mountain View, and the latter 
at Middle Kilns and Wolf Pond. The Chateaugay Eailway was built 
through Bellmont in 1886, and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence in 
1892. 

Two murders have been committed in Bellmont. In November, 
1852, Ira Sherwin, of Malone, shot and killed Justin Bell, a well-to-do 
farmer of Brasher, in the latter 's hunting or trapping camp near Owls 
Head. Sherwin himself reported the death of Bell, admitting that he 



Bellmont 181 

shot him, but claiming that it was an accident. He was known to have 
been under the influence of liquor the night of the murder, and incon- 
sistencies in his story and contradiction of it in some particulars by 
established facts cast suspicion upon him. The evidence on the trial 
was almost wholly circumstantial, but so convincing that a verdict of 
guilty was found. One bit of testimony was especially interesting, and 
told strongly for the prosecution. A bank in Montreal formerly indi- 
cated the denominations of its bills by Eoman numerals, and it was 
sought to show that a two-dollar note found in Sherwin's possession had 
been Bell's. An illiterate witness who had seen Bell's money testified 
that one note that he had seen Bell have was " an eleven dollar bill." 
No cross-questioning could shake him on that point, and when the two 
(II) dollar bill taken from Sherwin was produced he unhesitatingly 
identified it as at least exactly like the one that Bell had had. Sherwin 
was sentenced to be hung, but the sentence was commuted to life 
imprisonment. 

The other murder occurred in August, 1877, in the extreme north- 
western part of the town, and was perpetrated by an Italian tramp who 
called himself Joe Woods, but whose real name is believed to have been 
Joseph Sullivan, and his criminal record bad. The victim was Steven 
Barber, a respectable farmer of small means, who lived alone with his 
wife. Woods had stopped at the house for dinner the day before, and 
had sold articles of clothing to Mr. Barber, who in counting out the 
money in payment showed about thirty dollars still remaining in his 
possession. Woods gained entrance to the house in the night, shot and 
killed Mr. Barber in bed, and also twice shot Mrs. Barber. He was 
apprehended a day or two later in Clinton county, and brought to 
Malone, where, upon his arrival, a crowd quickly gathered, and chased 
him to the jail, with cries of " Lynch him," though no real attempt was 
made to take him from the officers. Woods was tried and convicted in 
December of the same year, and was executed in the jail yard at Malone 
in February, 1878. Mrs. Barber's wounds were severe, one bullet hav- 
ing penetrated an eye, and yet she positively identified Woods as the 
murderer, claiming to have recognized him in the moonlight. Con- 
sidering the character of her wounds, the identification was remarkable. 
Her evidence was certainly a marvel of clearness and certitude. 

In 1855 the Legislature appropriated five thousand dollars for clear- 
ing and improving the rafting channel of Salmon river and its tribu- 
taries and for the construction of piers, booms and dams, and in 1857 



182 History of Franklin County 

voted a further equal amount for completing the work. Wm. King, 
Buel H. Man and Aaron Beman were named in the act to expend the 
first appropriation, and Ebenezer Man, Hiram Horton and B. S. W. 
Clark to expend the second. A part of the money was applied to the 
building of the dam at Mountain View, and in consequence the locality 
was long known as " State Dam." When I first visited it, in 1863, the 
place was desolate enough. The sole building was a tumble-down barn, 
and the stream above the dam showed mainly only standing trunks of 
trees, half-sunken logs and a waste of roots and limbs. The act appro- 
priating the money carried permission to overflow State lands, and such 
flooding had killed the timber on the banks of the originally narrow 
channel. In 1893 a further appropriation of two thousand dollars was 
obtained for the removal of this refuse, and the locality is greatly 
improved in appearance. The first act of appropriation provided that 
the State lands adjacent to Salmon river should be sold only in parcels 
of six hundred and forty acres at public auction, and for not less than 
thirty cents an acre ! Try to buy a building or camp site there now, and 
note the advance in values. 

The hamlet of Chateaugay Lake, once a hive of activity and of 
abounding prosperity, is now almost deserted. The great forge build- 
ings and the sawmill have rotted down, many of the cottages built for 
the operatives have been demolished or removed, while others stand in 
a dilapidated condition, unoccupied, and the store that once was 
thronged with customers is at present the place of worship of the local 
organization of the Holiness Movement. There is no industrial estab- 
lishment in operation, nor any business at all except one small grocery 
store. The early teachers of Chateaugay Lake's school included Mrs. 
Paul Merrill, D. D. D. Dewey, Samuel and Theodore Beman, Misses 
Martha Williamson, Harriet Hoit and Jane and Olive Miles, Darius 
Merrill and Myron T. Whitney. 

The history of church organizations in Bellmont may be briefly told. 
Religious services were held at Chateaugay Lake as early as 1824 by 
Rev. Ashbel Parmelee of Malone and Elder Ephraim Smith. Mr. 
Chase told in a paper contributed to the Historical Society a few years 
ago that the former once officiated in Mr. Drew's house to a congrega- 
tion of only eight, but that these included every (adult?) inhabitant of 
the town. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Chateaugay Lake was incorpo- 
rated June 5, 1889, at a meeting held " at the accustomed place of wor- 



Bellmont 183 

ship," with Nathan Thurber, J. W. Merrill and Henry 1ST. Cootey as 
trustees. For fourteen years previously, however, Methodist services 
had been held regularly in the school house hall by the pastor of the 
church at Brainardsville, and occasional services from a more remote 
time. Chateaugay Lake never had a church building until 1916, when 
one was erected by the Methodist Episcopal denomination. The site, 
on the lake road about half way between the hamlet and the Banner 
House, was given by Dr. E. E. Thurber. What the purpose was I 
do not know, but notwithstanding the incorporation in 1889, a further 
incorporation under the same title was had October 17, 1914. 

St. Agnes Church of Chateaugay Lake (Koman Catholic) was incor- 
porated in 1875, and for several years thereafter services were held 
more or less regularly in the school house hall by the priest in charge 
at Chateaugay. Before such incorporation mass had been said infre- 
quently in private houses here, while latterly Catholic services have 
been at Brainardsville once a month, the priest at Chateaugay officiating. 
The society has no church building. 

The first Congregational Society of Bellmont, at Bellmont Center, 
was incorporated in 1849 with John Bichey, Joseph Williamson and 
Thomas McKenny as trustees, but no history of the life and activities 
of the organization is now traceable. Doubtless it was only a mission- 
ary charge, served probably by clergymen from Malone and Burke, and 
possibly sometimes from Chateaugay, and after a time was suffered to 
die. In 1868 the Presbyterian-Congregational Society of Bellmont was 
incorporated, and enrolled with the presbytery of Champlain in 1871. 
It had completed a church edifice in 1870. Bev. Andrew M. Millar 
served as pastor from 1867 to 1896. In later years services between 
pastorates were conducted by the Malone clergymen and by students 
from Magill College, Montreal. Prior to the erection of the church 
building services had been held first in the school house and then at 
the town house. 

The history of Methodism in Bellmont before 1853 is meagre. We 
have authentic information that the town was in the Chateaugay circuit, 
but nothing fixing the neighborhood or neighborhoods where the early 
meetings were held. Bev. James Erwin, stationed at Chateaugay, was 
certainly in Bellmont in 1835, and it is only a reasonable presumption 
that his predecessor in the circuit had been there before him, and that 
his successors visited the town every year afterward until the conference 
appointed a resident clergyman to the charge in 1854. This appointee 



184 History of Franklin County 

apparently preached both at Brainardsville and at Bellmont Center, and 
perhaps occasionally at Chateaugay Lake also. At Brainardsville serv- 
ices were held in the school house until the erection of the church edifice 
in 1866, and for sixteen years prior to 1870 there were pastors resident 
either here or at Bellmont Center. But in 1870 Brainardsville was a 
part of the Chateaugay charge, and so remained until 1885. Since this 
latter date it has been united with Chateaugay Lake and Bellmont 
Center, the three comprising one independent charge with a single 
pastor. Considerable improvements in the church building were made 
in 1915. 

At Bellmont Center a class was formed in 1853 or earlier, and until 
1888 or 1889, when a church building was provided, services were held 
at first in private houses or in the school house, and then in the town 
hall. During the period of fifteen years when Brainardsville was joined 
with Chateaugay, the Bellmont Center organization was served minis- 
terially by Benjamin F. Brown, a local preacher, who was commonly 
called "Priest" Brown, who died in 1868, and then by pastors located 
at Burke. Since 1885 it has been again united with Brainardsville. 
For several years no services were held in the winter season, because 
the church lacked provision for heating it, but this defect has now been 
corrected, and the church is open throughout the year. The church 
building was erected in 1888 on a site donated by Sherman J. Heading. 

A Methodist Episcopal church was built at Owls Head in 1898. The 
organization is a part of the Chasm Falls charge, the clergyman of 
which officiates at Owls Head. Prior to the establishment of this church 
occasional Methodist services had been held in homes in the vicinity. 

St. Elizabeth's at Mountain View was organized and a church build- 
ing erected in 1907 through the efforts of Rev. Father Valois of St. 
Helen's at Chasm Falls, of which charge it is a mission. It is attended 
usually by the rector of that church, though not infrequently supplied 
by priests who are guests at one of the hotels. 

The first Union Protestant Church of Mountain View was incor- 
porated May 29, 1915, with C. C. Morgan, J. W. Pond and S. E. Payne 
as trustees. The church building is an attractive structure. The organi- 
zation does not contemplate employment of a regular pastor, the church 
being, as its title indicates, open to all Protestant denominations, and 
services will probably be held in it by clergymen from vicinity parishes 
and by such as may spend their vacations at Mountain View. 



CHAPTER VII 
BOMBAY 

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb's 
purchase and all of the St. Eegis reservation on the American side of 
the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legis- 
lature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May fol- 
lowing. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to 
Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India. Mr. Hogan himself 
was a merchant in New York city, and so continued for a number of 
years after his first investment in lands in Bombay (then a part of 
Constable) in 1807, when he purchased 10,168 acres from Alexander 
Macomb for $15,250. In 1809 he bought 9,949 acres additional from 
John McYickar for $19,899.80, which gave him all of the township orig- 
inally called Macomb. A few years later he conveyed this entire tract 
to John Oliver, of Baltimore, Maryland, afterward repurchased it, 
mortgaged it to Oliver for $12,000, and the year following again con- 
veyed it to Oliver, for whose estate and heirs William Hogan (son of 
Michael) acted as agent in the sale of Bombay lands for many years. 
Asa Hascall and William A. Wheeler were subsequently agents for the 
Olivers. In all of the instruments recorded in Franklin county to which 
Michael Hogan was a party his residence is given as New York city, 
and in an act passed by the Legislature in 1821 as Waterford. So far 
as I am able to ascertain, he never resided at Bombay for any length 
of time, though it is altogether probable that he visited the place occa- 
sionally, and for a time kept in touch with matters there, as Hough 
refers to building operations which he caused to be undertaken in 1811 
and 1818. The first of these was the erection of a mill (probably a 
saw mill) in the eastern part of the town, and the second a grist mill 
at Hogansburgh. In 1817 Mr. Hogan leased from the Indians one hun- 
dred and forty-four acres of land and water at the point where the ham- 
let of Hogansburgh now is, agreeing to establish and maintain a ferry 
there and to pay an annual rental of three hundred and five dollars there- 
for. The term of the lease was for ten years, with the privilege of perpet- 
ual renewals. A couple of years later this lease was assigned to William 
Hogan for three thousand dollars, and the land itself was ceded in 

[185] 



186 History of Franklin County 

1824 by the Indians to the State of New York for one dollar and an 
ammity in perpetuity of three hundred and five dollars. The younger 
Mr. Hogan then acquired the fee from the State. 

The earliest recorded deed given to or by William Hogan is dated 1821, 
and his residence is stated therein to be Fort Covington. Until 1836 
all subsequent deeds in which he appears as grantor or grantee state 
his residence as Fort Covington or Hogansburgh, and after that as 
New York city. Mr. Hogan was born in 1792, lived in South Africa 
in his youth, studied the Dutch language there, and upon his return to 
this country entered Columbia College, New York, was graduated from 
it, studied law and was admitted to the bar. He served both the towns 
of Fort Covington and Bombay as supervisor, was elected to the Assem- 
bly in 1822, became one of the judges of the court of common pleas 
for Franklin county in 1829, and was elected to Congress in 1830. As 
a candidate for re-election in 1832 he was defeated. In 1850 he was 
appointed a clerk in the department of State at Washington, and held 
the position until 1866 or later. He died in Washington in 1875. In 
his younger years he was an intense partisan of the Andrew Jackson 
school of Democrats.- The Franklin Tel&graph said of him during his 
Congressional canvass that his bearing was " offensively aristocratic," 
that he was a free-trader, and that in sentiment he was a Southerner. 
But in a letter of the week following to the Telegraph Mr. Hogan 
declared himself a protectionist, and in a letter to the Malone Palladium 
in 1861, written from Washington, avowed himself vigorously a Union 
man, and declared it to be the duty of all good citizens to stand strongly 
against secession. 

Michael Hogan was born in Ireland in 1765. Hough's history says 
that he was for several years consul general of the United States at 
Valparaiso, Chile, and that he " was distinguished throughout various 
reverses of fortune by his enterprise, intelligence and probity, as well 
as by his hospitable and liberal disposition, and the urbanity of his 
manners." He died in Washington, D. C, in 1833. A further reference 
to him appears in the first chapter. 

It was doubtless due to the nativity of the Hogans, father and son, 
that Irish settlers began to swarm into Bombay about the year 1825, 
generally coming by steamship to Montreal directly from Ireland, and 
thence overland or up the St. Lawrence. Mr. Hogan the younger is 
said to have received these with great kindliness, and to have located 
them upon what was then regarded as the very best lands in the town, 



Bombay 187 

which location came to he known as the " Irish ridge." These lands 
to-day are very far from the best in Bombay, but in early times the 
bottoms and intervals were too wet to be worked, and thus the uplands 
alone were available for farming. These settlers, as Mr. Eeed says in 
his story of " Life on the Border," were apparently delighted to have 
an " illigant Irishman " for their boss, notwithstanding they found him 
invariably an exacting creditor and master, though not unjust. 

A few months ago an application was made to the court somewhere 
by a man named Hogan to have his name changed, and the incident 
brought out the statement that all Hogan s are the descendants of Irish 
kings, and that in ancient times they had a fortified residence at 
Ardcromy and another at Ballylusky. Assuming this to be true, the 
statement of the Telegraph regarding Mr. Hogan's aristocratic bearing 
may readily be believed to have been correctly descriptive. No descend- 
ant of the Bombay Hogans is known to be living, and the only evidences 
of the family remaining in Bombay are the buildings which they erected 
and a skeleton of a coach which was in its day an elegant equipage, 
richly upholstered, fitted with lamps, and painted and gilded to be fit 
for royalty itself. It was imported from England, used for a time in 
New York, and finally sent to Hogansburgh for storage. It was of 
great weight, and required four horses to haul it even on fairly good 
roads. On such roads as the county then possessed it could hardly be 
used at all. Though moth-eaten, dismantled and a wreck, it is still 
preserved at Hogansburgh, and a few years ago it was not uncommon 
to bring it out on a Fourth of July, and drive it up and down the 
street. The dwelling house built by William Hogan in Hogansburgh 
still stands, and is in a remarkably good state of preservation. 

There remains in Bombay scarcely one even of the group of men who 
were of the generation next after the earliest settlers, and records of 
their time or data concerning them seem not to have been kept. The 
first white settler in the town, one Hadley, a hunter, is said to have 
located in 1803, and to have been followed by Samuel Sanborn and 
family in 1805 : but immigration did not begin in any volume until 
about 1822, and was at first largely from Vermont and New Hampshire. 
Ten or twelve years later nearly all of the original settlers had removed 
to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, selling out to other arrivals, 
mostly from Vermont, and at about this time a good many Irishmen 
also came. 

Among the first merchants in the eastern section of the town, at 



188 Histoey of Franklin County 

Bombay Corners, were James Luther and Jesse A. Clark, the former 
having established a store there in 1824, and the latter having followed 
in 1826. Early hotel keepers were John Diggins and William P. 
Moseley, and later Mortimer Eussell. Benjamin Reynolds came from 
Vermont in 1824, and his son Jacob G. followed in 1831. The latter, 
after engaging in farming for several years, became the principal mer- 
chant and business man at the Corners, and one of the moneyed men 
of the town. William McEoberts settled in 1821, taught school for one 
term, and with his brother, James, built a tannery south of the Cor- 
ners in 1823. He afterwards engaged in farming. Joseph Elliott, Jr., 
located in 1819, Amasa and Rufus Townsend, farmers, about 1825, 
Moses B. Elliott in 1826, John McCabe in 1831, Pearson Eolfe in 1832, 
Jonathan Wiggins and George H. Eussell in 1833, Charles Eussell in 
1835 or earlier, Elvin K. Smith, a physician, in 1835, Alanson Donald- 
son in 1837, Preserved Ware in 1839, and Mortimer Eussell in 1844. 
Benjamin Eolfe was a resident as early as 1825, and was the third or 
possibly the fourth school teacher in the town — having been preceded 
by Jacob Travis, who taught in a log barn a mile west of the Corners, 
in which at least a cord of wood was burned daily to keep the pupils 
from freezing ; also by Wilson Eandall, and probably by William McEob- 
erts. Either Eandall or Eolfe was the first to preside in a real school 
house, which was finished in 1824 or 1825, near the Corners. A con- 
siderable number of the boys and girls in attendance were men and 
women grown. Sylvester Parr was pedagogue a couple of years after 
Eolfe, and later became a Baptist minister. Then, in 1828, came Amos 
Emerson, a superior type, and also an ardent believer in the virtue and 
efficacy of the blue beech. 

There is little to be told of life in the town in its early days, the story 
differing in no essential particulars from that of any other frontier set- 
tlement of the period. Forests were converted into fruitful fields by dint 
of hard labor, privation prevailed and was endured as a matter of course 
and without especial realization of hardship, schools were provided as 
soon as might be, religious services supplied a little later, with the 
hotels and their bars keeping up a regular devil's side show or chapel 
(rather worse here than in most similar communities), and men and 
women lived and loved and died as is the law of the universe. 

The first religious movement in the vicinity of the Corners was 
Congregational, a minister having been engaged at a salary of four 
hundred dollars a year, but he remained only a twelvemonth, after 



Bombay 189 

which the organization went to pieces, and has never been revived. Eev. 
Nathaniel Colver, then stationed at Fort Covington, seized upon the 
opportunity presented by abandonment of the field by the Congre- 
gationalists, and was quickly successful in developing an interest in the 
Baptist faith and in winning converts. He was a man of aggressive 
energy and force, but in 1827, though formerly himself a Mason, became 
an open assailant of the order, lecturing and inveighing bitterly against 
it, and thus antagonized and alienated a number of his leading 
parishioners. That breach and scandalous conduct on the part of two 
or three prominent members of the Church discredited the society and 
led to its disruption. Mr. Colver had no successor of his denomination 
in Bombay, and so died the effort to found and maintain a Baptist 
Church there. But Methodism was becoming a power in the world, and 
its zealous and tireless circuit riders were already disputing even this 
little field with Mr. Colver before the latter's ministrations failed, and 
were holding services alternately with him on Sundays in the school 
house. This denomination is the only one that succeeded in maintain- 
ing itself in the eastern part of the town from early times to the present. 
Its first pastor or preacher was Luther Lee, in 1828, who was then 
stationed at Maloue, and of whom the story runs that at the age of 
eighteen he was without education, but that, marrying a woman of 
superior mind and acquirements, was taught by her to read, and 
influenced to study. Mr. Lee served in Bombay once a month for a 
year. He afterward became an eloquent divine and a fiery anti-slavery 
crusader. Who were his immediate successors the records fail to show, 
but in 1832 " The Bombay Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church " 
was incorporated, and was associated with churches at South Bombay, 
Helena and Brasher, a single pastor serving all of these points. From 
1877 to 1901 it was joined with Fort Covington. The first church edi- 
fice was erected in 1836 or 1837, and was rebuilt and enlarged in 1867. 
A fine parsonage was built recently. 

There is also a Methodist Church at South Bombay, which has been 
an out appointment of Bombay since 1904. The church edifice here 
was erected in 1891, though services by clergy of this denomination had 
been held more or less regularly in the school house from a very early 
time. 

Notwithstanding the number of Roman Catholics in the eastern part 
of the town had not been inconsiderable from early times, their privi- 
lege of worship according to the rites of their faith until recent years, 



190 History of Franklin County 

except as mass was said irregularly and infrequently in the hotel or at 
a private residence, was enjoyed only by journeying to Fort Covington 
or Hogansburgh. About 1905, however, services began to be held at 
Bombay with some approach to regularity by priests from Fort Coving- 
ton, and were so continued until 1912, when the Church ceased to be 
a mission, and was given a resident rector, the Eev. James E. Duffy, 
who continued in charge until 1918, when he became a chaplain in the 
army. A church building was erected in 1905, and is clear of debt. A 
rectory was built in 1913. The parish is small. 

The Eoman Catholic Church at Hogansburgh was founded in 1827, 
soon after a visit to the place by Bishop Dubois of New York, of which 
diocese it was then a part. The bishop's counsel to the people of his 
faith there was given at a meeting held in a barn, and proceedings for 
building a church edifice and for incorporation of a church society 
followed in due course. Incorporation was had by residents of Bombay, 
Brasher and Fort Covington, November 7, 1834, as the " Boman Cath- 
olic Church of St. Patrick at Hogansburgh," and the first trustees, 
besides the bishop of the diocese and two men from Brasher, were David 
O'Neil and James Murphy of Bombay and Patrick Feely and Lantry 
Adams of Hogansburgh. The meeting for incorporating was held at 
Mr. Feeley's house, and the certificate recites that, a chapel being then 
in course of construction, steps were taken at the meeting to assure its 
early completion. Between 1827 and 1833 or 1834 services were held 
only irregularly, and were conducted by priests from neighboring local- 
ities, but mainly by Bev. Father Marcoux, the rector of the Boman 
Catholic Church for the Indians at St. Begis. In 1829 or 1830 Bishop 
Dubois again visited the parishes in his see in Franklin county, journey- 
ing by sledge drawn by dogs, and still again in 1835, when he was accom- 
panied by Bev. Father Hughes, who afterward became archbishop. Upon 
his return to New York from one or the other of these later visits, prob- 
ably the first of them, he assigned Bev. John McNulty to the Hogans- 
burgh charge. Some authorities place the beginning of this rectorship 
in 1833, and others in 1836. Hogansburgh was the mother church of 
the Romish faith in Franklin county, and it included as parts of its 
parish Massena, Fort Covington, Brasher, Brushton, Trout River, Con- 
stable, Malone, Chateaugay and Cherubusco. Father McNulty was a 
man of fine presence and broad attainments, and an indefatigable 
worker. The church edifice at Hogansburgh, which he found unfinished, 
was completed during his rectorship, and the work of organizing 



Bombay 191 

churches throughout the district was prosecuted with great energy. A 
scandalous charge was brought against him by one of his parishioners 
in Malone (claimed by him and his friends to have been a conspiracy 
between disaffected Catholics and Protestants) ; the case went to the 
courts, with a verdict against the priest, who was incarcerated in the 
jail at Malone. He escaped and fled to Canada, where he continued to 
reside until his death. While in service at Hogansburgh Father 
McNulty conducted a spirited discussion with Eev. Ashbel Parmelee 
of Malone concerning Romanism, the letters being published in the 
Malone Palladium. Great ability and learning were displayed by both 
of the controversialists. After the departure of Father McNulty the 
church at Hogansburgh was without a settled rector until 1843, the 
people having been attended in the interval by the priest at St. Eegis 
and by Father Moore of Huntingdon, Que. Since then it has had rec- 
tors of its own continuously. The original church edifice was of stone, 
and served the needs of the parish until 1876, when a new structure was 
erected, which was burned in 1905. A year later it was replaced by a 
handsome brick edifice, finely finished within, and costing about fifty 
thousand dollars. The original church building was given over in 
1878 to the uses of a convent school until 1880. From 1880 to August, 
1915, when its roof and interior were burned, it was used as a parochial 
hall. Rev. Father Michael J. Brown, a Malone boy, who was a student 
at Franklin Academy fifty years ago, became the rector of St. Patrick's 
in 1879, and so continued until his death in 1917. In his interesting 
book, " History of the Diocese of Ogdensburg," Rev. John Talbot Smith 
says of the people of this parish that they are " unaffected by the indiffer- 
ence and scepticism of the Champlain and Black river portions of the 
diocese, simple in their customs and style of living, and comfortably 
situated. Their children are growing up like their fathers, and the 
future of the parish spiritually and financially is well assured." The 
parish contains about two hundred families. In 1849 all of its then 
several charges except Massena, Brasher, Fort Covington and Constable 
were set off from it, becoming independent parishes, or included in the 
then newly created district of Malone. The exceptions noted are now 
independent also. 

A Methodist Episcopal Church was established as an Indian mission 
in 1847, two Indians having visited the church at Brasher and entreated 
such action. Sectarian rancor was more prevalent then than now, as 
well as more virulent, and there was apprehension that the attempt to 
introduce Protestantism among the Indians might involve personal 



192 History of Franklin County 

danger to the participants. Therefore, three or four wagon loads of the 
parishioners of the Brasher pastor, Eev. Ebenezer Arnold, accompanied 
him as a sort of protective guard to his first meeting, which was held in 
the home of one of the Indians. However, though the movement was 
antagonized by the priest at St. Regis, and caution voiced to the Indians 
against attending the services, there was no violence offered, nor were 
the services even disturbed to any serious degree. The first meeting 
was attended by a couple of dozen Indians, and such interest was 
awakened that a few months later a band of them attended a camp 
meeting at Canton, where they professed conversion. In the autumn 
of 1848 a house was leased as a place for worship, and the next year 
solicitation for funds for building a church and buying land for a 
cemetery was prosecuted throughout Northern New York. Bishop 
Janes also collected a few hundred dollars elsewhere. Land could not 
be had on the reservation itself, and therefore a site was bought next 
adjoining. A church building was erected and dedicated in 1849, the 
bell for which was provided through Bishop Janes, who also caused a 
parsonage to be erected and furnished. Only devotion and a willing- 
ness to endure privation and isolation could induce clergymen to accept 
assignment to this charge, and continue their labors in it under difficul- 
ties and with results which, on the surface at least, carry ho great 
degree of encouragement. The church counts as adherents about three 
hundred Indians, of whom something like sixty are members. For 
twenty years, from 1866 to 1886, Thomas LaFort, an Indian, was pastor 
of the church, the records of which note that his ministry was disorgan- 
izing and his influence hurtful to the cause. 

As early as 1834 William Hogan provided for occasional services of 
the Episcopal Church at Hogansburgh, and erected a house there for 
worship. The structure was large enough for a much more populous 
community, and was never finished. It is now owned by Mr. Fulton, 
and used as a barn. In 1850 Eleazer Williams, either a son of an 
Indian or of the King of France, returned to St. Regis from his mission 
work in Wisconsin and from lobbying at Washington, and established 
an Episcopal mission at Hogansburgh. He had been there as a teacher 
and missionary in 1831, 1834 and 1836 also. Such services as he held 
were conducted usually in the homes of the few adherents of this 
faith, and rarely in the structure that Mr. Hogan had erected. From 
1858, when Mr. Williams died, there was no Episcopal Church organiza- 
tion in the place until twelve or fifteen years later, when it was revived 



Bombay 193 

by Eev. J. C. Stewart, rector of St. Mark's, Malone. A neat church 

building was erected, largely through the liberality of the late Alfred 
Fulton, and services have since been held there more or less regularly — 
usually by divinity students from Montreal. 

Something like forty years ago, after an exasperating and financially 
disastrous attempt to establish and maintain an educational institution 
at Malone, the Sisters of Mercy founded a day and boarding school at 
Hogansburgh, occupying initially the old St. Patrick's Church building. 
Then, in 1880, the work having prospered, the Sisters purchased a 
tract of fifteen acres near the St. Regis river, and erected a three-story 
building, with basement, of their own. It is substantial, capacious, and 
attractive in appearance, and located in very pleasant grounds. Sister 
Frances McGarr was then the Mother Superior of the local chapter, 
and it speaks eloquently for her zeal and devotion that with her own 
hands she dipped in a preservative solution every brick that went into 
the structure. For years the institution was maintained as a parochial 
school, with a large attendance of white children and a few Indians. 
Something like fifteen years ago Sister Stanislaus McGarr persuaded 
Miss Katherine Drexel to visit Hogansburgh, and succeeded in interest- 
ing her in the school and its field for work among the St. Eegis Indians. 
The institution was thereupon converted into the " Indian Girls' Indus- 
trial School," and cares for and educates fifty Indian girls. It is paid five 
thousand dollars per year therefor out of the income from the Drexel 
fund. Miss Drexel is the daughter of a Philadelphia banker, and inher- 
ited a fortune of millions of dollars. Eeared in luxury, accomplished, a 
favorite in society, she nevertheless in 1889 renounced worldly pleasures 
and fortune, became a novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy, and devoted 
her inheritance to Christian and philanthropic work — a large part of 
it to the education of negroes and Indians. She is now the Mother 
Superior of the Order of the Pdessed Sacrament. The school at 
Hogansburgh is supervised and conducted by six or seven Sisters, four 
of whom apply themselves to teaching. The girls in attendance arc 
trained in household duties and domestic economy, so that when they 
return to their homes, and eventually become housewives themselves, 
they are equipped to do their work far better than could possibly bo 
the case but for Sister Drexel's benefaction and the conscientious efforts 
of the Sisters who administer it. 

Most of the pioneers — merchants, millers, farmers and teachers — 
were men of energy, enterprise and rugged character, and nearly every 

7 



194 History of Franklin County 

one named had a noteworthy part in the town's development and in 
administering its affairs. At least six of them served as supervisor, and 
two (Charles Russell and John S. Eldredge) as Member of Assembly 
also. A son of Charles Eussell (Horace A.) became an eminent lawyer 
and acquired wealth in New York city, was assistant district attorney 
there for a number of years, and afterward a judge of the superior court 
and judge advocate on Governor Cornell's staff. Charles Russell and 
George Russell, the latter of whom removed to Malone, became mer- 
chants at the Corners, conducting what was known as the " union store," 
which was in its time the principal mercantile establishment there. 

Another son of Bombay who has made a success in life is Daniel B. 
Murphy; born in the Cold Spring neighborhood in 1848, and educated- 
in the district school, Fort Covington Academy (where he was a class- 
mate of Hon. F. D. Kilburn and Charles A. Burke), and the Potsdam 
Normal. After teaching for three years in St. Lawrence county, he 
became principal of the Dunkirk high school in 1870, and in 1873 of the 
Brothers' Academy in Rochester. Two years later he associated himself 
with the wholesale and retail department store of Burke, FitzSimons & 
Hone in Rochester, acquired a financial interest in the business in 1886, 
and was admitted four years later to full membership in the concern, 
which is one of the largest in Western New York. Mr. Murphy has 
never sought political preferment, but, on the contrary, has declined 
nomination for one of the highest city offices and for member of Con- 
gress at a time when election would have been certain. He has been 
for nineteen years one of the board of managers of the Craig Colony for 
Epileptics; a delegate annually for ten years past to the Mohonk Peace 
Conference; a prominent member of important business associations of 
national scope, the volume of business of one of them running into hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars ; and standing so well at home as to be 
intrusted with consequential fiduciary assignments. In 1907 he was 
State president of the conference of charities and corrections, which 
includes all correctional institutions and all public and private 
hospitals. 

Another Bombay man who has emphatically " made good " is John 
Daly, a grandson of one of the Irish pioneers of 1826. Mr. Daly was 
appointed on the New York city police force in 1886 as a patrolman — 
a not particularly agreeable rank — but, possessing ambition and the 
impulses and manners of a gentleman, Mr. Daly determined early to 
win promotion. In five years he had become a sergeant; in another five 
a lieutenant, and in 1903 a captain, with assignment to a gambling dis- 



Bombay 195 

trict. The usual course at that time in such a precinct was to levy black- 
mail on such resorts, and undoubtedly Captain Daly had opportunity to 
become rich through graft; but he had already won designation as 
" honest John," and showed here that the characterization was deserved. 
In six months he effectually suppressed the dens. The reputation thus 
made gave him still more important assignments, and in 1909 he was 
promoted to an inspectorship. In 1918 he became chief inspector. 

Though not a native of Bombay, nor even having been connected with 
it in any way except as a teacher of the Cold Spring district school 
during one winter, and afterward as an occasional visitor, Patrick 
Gavin Duffy is so associated in the local public mind with the town that 
reference to him seems to belong here. He was born in Ireland in 1835, 
and came to New York at the age of twelve years. There he found 
employment in a livery stable for a year or two, when he went into the 
country to make his home with an uncle who was a priest, in order that 
he might receive the rudiments of an education while earning his keep 
as a chore boy. The priest, Eev. Father Thomas Callan, was soon 
transferred to missionary work in Northern New York, and was located 
for a time at Malone. The lad Duffy accompanied him, became a 
student at Franklin Academy, and taught school in Bombay. He 
returned to New York, and became a teacher in the schools there — 
afterward studying law and winning admission to the bar in 1874. 
Even while teaching he manifested an interest and displayed such activity 
in politics that by the time he had become an attorney he had attracted 
the attention and gained the friendship of a number of Tammany lead- 
ers, and in 1875 he received appointment as a police justice — continu- 
ing in the office for nearly twenty years. Upon his retirement it was 
estimated that no less than a hundred and seventy thousand prisoners 
had been arraigned before him. He was known always as " the Little 
Judge," and his quaint humor and individualistic methods made him 
known the world over. Often he would disregard the particular accusa- 
tion preferred against a prisoner, and pronounce sentence for " imper- 
tinence " or for some other incident arising during the hearing or 
trial — as, for instance, when he sent a man to the penitentiary for 
having falsely given his name as John Kelly, who was particularly 
revered by Judge Duffy. As one of his obituary notices put it, he 
" coupled sentences with sound advice delivered in a Solomonesque way," 
and " dispensed justice as no one before or since has done." It was 
also said of him that there was "never a hint that he was venal, 
politically or personally biased, or other than decorous in private life." 



196 History of Franklin County 

In the field of politics he was almost a genius. He perfected a mar- 
velonsly efficient organization in the ward of which he was the leader, 
and his ambition and aim were to carry it for the Democracy year after 
year by an almost unanimous vote. It is told that at some elections the 
whole number of votes cast against his candidates in the entire ward 
did not number more than three or four. Mr. Duffy was a fluent and 
eloquent speaker, and his wit, geniality and kindness of heart made him 
a multitude of friends. He died in 1895. 

There have been four separate surveys of the township — by Church, 
Grill, Dawson and McDonald — and not improbably each numbered the 
lots differently, so that it is impossible to determine locations by deed 
descriptions with certainty ; nor are there elderly residents who are 
familiar with the story of early industries. Thus the facts as to these 
must be in a measure somewhat conjectural. Daniel W. Church, sur- 
veyor, erected the first mill for Mr. Hogan in 181 1 on the 'Little 
Salmon river near the center of the town, and it seems not improbable 
that it was the same, or at least on the same site, of the one subsequently 
owned and at various dates operated by Mortimer Russell, Jacob G. 
Reynolds, Charles and Orange Phelps, Thomas Donaldson, Daniel 
McCarthy, Ernest G. Reynolds, and Thomas A. Sears and W. B. Bab- 
cock. In 1849 it was known as Sylvester's mills, and a newspaper item 
of that date chronicled that Eeed Xiles, the elder, was killed there by 
the falling of a timber for a bridge that he was helping to build. There 
was also a comparatively early saw mill at Dog Hollow, owned by Amasa 
Townsend, which was built over into a flax mill by Alvin Russell, and 
converted later into a creamery. William McRoberts had a tannery 
more than ninety years ago on Little Salmon river about a half mile 
south of Bombay Corners, which was owned subsequently by Jacob G. 
Reynolds, and then by James Blood, and again by Mr. Reynolds. It 
was torn down about 1888 by Dr. H. S. Rockwood, and the material in 
it used to build a barn. There are a grist mill and a saw mill at South 
Bombay, the latter very old. The original grist mill was carried off by 
a flood, and its successor has been rebuilt or remodeled a number of 
times. Both of these mills were built originally, I think, by William W. 
Townsend, or possibly by George F. Burgess, and are now owned and 
operated by George Russell, as they had been by his father before him. 
Something like half a mile north from the Russell properties Jonathan 
Wiggins had a saw mill fifty-odd years ago, which a freshet destroyed, 
and which was not rebuilt. Mr. Wiggins and James Dougherty at one 
time burned lime in the southern part of Bombay, and their output 



Bombay 197 

supplied all of the county south of their kilns and west of Malone. 
While no one recalls having even heard that there was ever an iron 
forge in the town, the deed of the Eussell saw mill lot by Townsend to 
Burgess carries the privilege of maintaining a dam across the river at 
or near the site of the old forge, and, again, a deed from the Olivers to 
Elisha Barney of S wanton, Vt, in 1827, is for two acres of land and 
water at this same point, known as the " forge lot." The record in the 
county clerk's office shows that the Olivers wiped Barney out by fore- 
closure in 1830. Though no discoverable record or local tradition tells 
more, the present owner of the premises, Mr. Russell, has found ore 
there which was plainly mined elsewhere. Only a mile to the west 
there is a deposit of bog ore, now owned by Ernest G. Reynolds, which 
is Icnown to have been a source of supply for the Skinner works at 
Brasher, and the existence of which may easily be taken as the reason 
for the Barney venture' at South Bombay, which must have been of 
brief duration. A starch mill was built on the Little Salmon a mile 
southeast of Bombay Corners by James Parr, and also one on Little Deer 
river, east of South Bombay, by Wilcox & Adams of Bangor. The 
former passed to the ownership of Oren Jenkins, and Hazen K. Cross 
had an interest in it at one time. The other was sold to Newton Law- 
rence, and by him to James H. Sargent. It was torn down when the 
manufacture of potato starch became unprofitable. In this same vicinity 
there was still another saw mill, built by John Moore, and operated by 
him, and then by his son, Thomas, until it was carried off by a freshet. 
South Bombay formerly had a hotel, which was the old homestead 
of Rufus Berry, built over by his son, Homer T., about 1869, and 
conducted by him for a time. It was leased later to Reed Niles, the 
younger, and was then kept by 0. W. Berry. It has now been changed 
into a private residence again. 

In 1877 the town was visited by a plague of grasshoppers. The pas- 
tures were stripped almost as bare as a floor; orchards were stripped of 
their leaves; corn was almost altogether destroyed, and the harvest of 
oats and barley was not more than a quarter of what the fields had 
earlier promised. The damage was estimated at not less than fifty 
thousand dollars. 

In the western part of the town, comprising the Hogansburgh dis- 
trict (formerly known as St. Regis Mills, and still earlier as Gray's 
'nils) Rev. Father Anthony Gordon, who came from Caughnawaga to 
St. Regis with a band of Indians about 1760, is supposed to have erected 
a saw mill as early as 1762, and to have shipped rafts of lumber and 



198 History of Franklin County 

timber thence to Montreal. This mill is said to have burned in 1807, 
and replaced five or six years later by two Frenchmen. The place 
was Gray's Mills when Michael Hogan leased lands there from Gray, 
who, made a captive in youth in Washington county, had grown up 
with the tribe, and became one of its most intelligent and influential 
leaders. The grist mill was built by Michael Hogan in 1818, and still 
stands. It and the saw mill are now owned and operated in a small 
way by Maurice W. Lantry. Early merchants in Hogansburgh were John 
Clendenning in 1819, John S. Eldredge and Elisha Belding in 1825, 
Isaac Seymour and Sylvester Gilbert in 1826 or 1827, Gurdon S. Mills in 
1824 (whose son bore the same name) and Alfred Fulton about 1830. 
Mr. Eldredge was a Member of Assembly in 1840 and 1841, removed to 
California in 1849, and died there in 1851. Mr. Mills and Mr. Fulton 
each accumulated a handsome property, lived useful lives, and died 
respected and lamented. They were as good citizens as any town ever 
had, though perhaps not as pushing and enterprising as a busier environ- 
ment might have made them. A later comer, in 1854, who belonged in 
the same class with these, was Samuel Barlow, who died in California a 
few years ago. Other early settlers at Hogansburgh were Benjamin 0. 
Harrington, in 1828, who built a tannery there; Lemuel K. Warren, 
landlord in 1831, and John Connolly the same year; Alpha Burget in 
1832; and Amherst K. Williams, a man of parts and prominent, in 1833. 
Philip Walsh had a saw mill at one time on the west side of the river. 
A son of Alfred Fulton is still in trade at Hogansburgh, and another 
son (Louis) is a successful lawyer in New York city. Bombay is no 
more populous to-day than it was three-quarters of a century ago, not- 
withstanding a considerable part of its area is as fine farming land as 
there is in the county. (In 1835 it had 1,357 inhabitants, and now has 
but 1,377). At the former date it was the fourth town in the county, 
only Chateaugay, Fort Covington and Malone being larger. In its 
western part the St. Regis reservation stands a bar to extension of 
farming or other enterprises, the original splendid forests of pine and 
other timber have disappeared before the axe or fire, and the town has 
never enjoyed satisfactory transportation facilities. At one time small 
steamboats ascended the St. Regis river from the St. Lawrence to 
Hogansburgh, but the channel now lacks sufficient depth for even such 
navigation. Nor is there hardly a rowboat owned in the place. True, 
there is a branch of the Grand Trunk Railway through the town, but it 
affords access to American markets onlv bv way of the west, the line 



Bombay 199 

running into Canada six or eight miles to the east, and there is no 
competition. 

The town has three small hamlets — Bombay, Hogansburgh and 
South Bombay. Bombay has a population of possibly five hundred. It 
has six stores, two churches, a town hall, a school employing five teach- 
ers, a railway station, the manufacturing establishment of Shields 
Bros., a feed and grist mill, and a moving picture hall and theatre. The 
Bombay Grange, which owns its building and has a considerable mem- 
bership, is the only public organization in the place, except those of a 
religious character. Shields Bros, have built up an extensive business 
in the manufacture of moccasins, play suits of Indian, cowboy and cow- 
girl costumes, and baseball, military and boy scout uniforms. They 
make also burned leather and burned wood goods, and deal largely in 
Indian-made baskets of splint and sweet grass. They employ about 
fifty hands in the factory itself, and nearly as many more in the sales- 
rooms and in outside work, and a large corps of selling agents represent 
them in far places. 

Hogansburgh claims a population of about three hundred, and has 
practically no business enterprises other than mercantile, though for- 
merly it had a large toy and basket factory, operated by Dwyer and 
Lantry. The St. Begis river cuts the hamlet in two, and the parte are 
about as separate and distinct as if miles apart. The saw mill and 
grist mill do only a small business, and of wholly a custom character. 
Fire has scourged the place severely upon a number of occasions, 
especially on the west side of the river. A fire in August, 1915, wiped 
out the hotel there, all but two of the stores, and several dwellings, 
entailing a loss estimated at forty thousand dollars. A few weeks later 
the basket and toy factory building, which contained an electric light- 
ing plant also, was burned. The village is electric lighted, has four or 
five stores, three churches (one an Indian mission) and the Indian 
Industrial School for Girls, conducted by the Sisters of Mercy. 

South Bombay consists only of a church, a saw mill, a grist mill, and 
a few scattered houses. 

In July, 1849, a forest fire swept over the central part of the town- 
ship, destroying forty buildings, fences, crops and bridges, and burning 
to death large numbers of sheep. 

In 1863, in order to escape a draft, the voters of the town authorized 
a bond issue to provide funds for bounties to be given for volunteers, 
but the supervisor refused to sign the bonds. Eetribution came to him 
the next year, when he was defeated for re-election. The people of the 



200 History of Franklin County 

town were understood to be largely in sympathy with the Southern 
cause, and 1 recall having heard in my boyhood that a rebel Hag had 
been raised there, which was probably not true, as later 1 have been 
told that the report originated from the fact that an irresponsible char- 
acter in the town, acting only upon his own initiative and responsibility, 
did put out a nondescript emblem, which had quite a different 
significance. 

The Massena Springs and Fort Covington Eailroad was built by the 
Grand Trunk Eailway through the town in 1887. It connects at the 
former place with the New York Central system, and at the latter with 
tbe Grand Trunk. Bombay contributed nothing but the right of way to 
tiie enterprise. Two years later, Ernest G. Reynolds, in association with 
the Central Vermont Eailroad, built a line from Moira to Bombay Cor- 
ners. At Moira it had a connection with the then Northern Adirondack 
(now the New York and Ottawa) Eailroad and with the Ogdensburg 
and Lake Champlain (now the Ogdensburg division of the Rutland 
Eailroad). This line never did much business, and never paid. Effort 
was made to sell it to the Grand Trunk, but the latter would not buy 
even at the value of the rails. The road was abandoned in 1896 and 
the rails taken up and sold. In 1891 a company w T as organized to build 
a railroad from Bombay Corners to the St. Lawrence, via 'Hogans- 
burgh, but it never began operations. 

Bombay ranks perhaps seventh among the towns of the county as 
a dairy district, and finds the industry more profitable than it used to be, 
for in 1843 an Eastern buyer purchased a large quantity of butter 
there at ten cents per pound, and ten years later a local operator con- 
tracted with the farmers for all of their June, July and August product 
at fourteen cents. A cheese factory was built by Mortimer and William 
Russell in 1872, which was burned three or four years later. In 1875 
tbe farmers of the vicinity united to build a creamery, which Thomas 
A. Sears bought and enlarged, and in 1892 sold to William McKenna, 
who bought also and operated the Clark & Eoss creamery at Dog Hollow. 
These two establishments are now owned by the Franklin County Con- 
densary Company of Bangor, and the milk received at them is shipped 
to Fort Covington. Another co-operative creamery was located between 
Bombay and Hogansburgh, but friction between its patrons led to its 
sale to Bradley & Monaghan. Work in it has ceased, and the building 
is to be torn down. There is also a creamery at Hogansburgh, built by 
Henry Bowker, sold after his death to Michael Crowley, and now 
owned and operated by Benjamin & Totman. 



CHAPTER VIII 
BRANDON 

Brandon was set off from Bangor January 88, 1828, and then 
included seven townships, one and a half of which, after a long and 
hard contest, were detached from it and added to Harrietstown in 1883, 
and afterward four and a half others were set off to make Santa Clara. 
The original settlers were mostly from Vermont, and the town was named 
by them from Brandon in that State. It has never had importance indus- 
trially, commercially or agriculturally, and until within a few years it 
never had a single inhabitant whose financial rating exceeded more 
than about twenty thousand dollars, and only one whose estate reached 
that figure, which sum he accumulated simply by spending practically 
nothing and saving everything. He lived to be about ninety years 
of age, and his earnings were never large. Living alone, and having 
neither wife nor child, and being very abstemious, it is doubtful if, 
except when he was in Malone, serving the town as supervisor, his 
expenditures for sustenance amounted to half a dollar per week,' and 
clothes and other items cost correspondingly. 

Brandon's people were industrious, frugal and generally shrewd and 
hard-headed. An illustration is found in the fact that when the dis- 
tinction between county and town poor was abolished, eighty odd years 
ago, and the statute permitted each town to make disposition as it 
might choose of any surplus in its poor fund, Brandon voted to apply 
such surplus to the payment of the taxes of residents, notwithstanding 
it must have been the fact that substantially all of the amount had been 
contributed by non-resident taxpayers. 

The character of the locality is such that opportunity for money- 
making in a large way has never been present, except perhaps through 
extensive lumbering operations, which required larger capital than any 
early resident possessed. Almost the only arable land within the pres- 
ent limits of the town, except a few river bottoms, lies along the north- 
ern border, comprising a strip of from a mile to a mile and a half in 
width. Within this belt are a few fairly good farms, though most are 
of light soil and not very productive. South of this belt is onlv a 
wilderness, abounding in rock and sand, and utterly worthless save 

[201] 



202 History of Franklin County 

for the timber on it. The river bottoms referred to are adapted only 
to the raising of hay and oats, frosts precluding cultivation of corn and 
other crops. Fortunately the ownership of Brandon's timber lands has 
been so divided that no one large concern, anxious for a quick clean-up, 
has had control, so that the town's natural resources have been con- 
served, and, as operations are now conducted, the timber may be made 
to last for moderate cutting for a generation yet. Had it been other- 
wise, the larger part of the town's area would be to-day a denuded 
waste. 

The nearest approach to a village or hamlet in Brandon is Beynolds- 
ton, in the western part, where within a mile or such a matter there 
are a sawmill, planing mill, blacksmith shop, one small store and pos- 
sibly thirty or forty dwelling houses. Half or more of these houses and 
the store, mills and shop are owned by Eeynolds Brothers, viz., Herbert 
H., Berton L. and Newton, who have about ten thousand acres of timber 
lands, stretching across the southern end of the town. The father of 
these brothers, Orson L. Eeynolds, moved to Brandon from Bangor in 
1870, buying a water power and a small tract of land, to which he 
added other parcels as he had opportunity and could find the means ; 
and the like policy has been followed by the sons since his death. 
Prior to the time of Mr. Beynolds's original purchase his father-in-law 
had been offered practically all of the township at the price of a shilling 
an acre, whereas adjacent tracts no better timbered and no more acces- 
sible have sold during the past few years as high as ten dollars per acre. 

For a number of years past Eeynolds Brothers have had a contract 
for the delivery annually of from three to five million feet of logs from 
the southern half of their holdings to the Brooklyn Cooperage Com- 
pany, which has a private railroad running from its mill in St. Eegis 
Falls across Waverly and through the Eeynolds lands in Brandon, a 
distance of about fourteen miles, and delivery of logs to it was made at 
any convenient point along the railroad line. The contract expires in 
1918, and now Eeynolds Brothers plan to confine their activities to 
lumbering the soft timber on the south half of their tract and both the 
hard and soft on the north half exclusively for their own mill at 
Eeynoldston. During the life of the contract with the Brooklyn Cooper- 
age Company they employed as many as a hundred men in the winter 
season, but with the completion of their contract the number will 
doubtless be smaller. 

The number of sawmills that at various times Brandon has had has 



Brandon 203 

been large, but all of them except the Reynolds proposition and one 
other have had only a small product. The second exception was that of 
Hon. Joseph R. Flanders, of Malone, which was disastrous. Having 
acquired a large tract by contract in 1866, Mr. Flanders proceeded to 
build a road in the winter across very difficult country south from 
Skerry, and also to build a dam and mill in the same season at a point 
on Deer river where he proposed to operate. The cost was heavy, and 
the burden of this initial expense, together with the long haul that had 
to be made to the railroad, compelled abandonment of the enterprise in 
1873. Pretty much everything in and about the mill was stolen or 
left to rust and decay, and the property was never operated afterward. 
Webster Brothers subsequently obtained control of the lands, and cut 
large quantities of bark there for their tannery in Malone. 'Reynolds 
Brothers now own the tract. 

Other mills have been Ira Ewings's, the first built in the town, and 
owned later by Lyman Weeks ; James Skerry's, later owned by Warren 
Aldrich, and now by L. C. Bowen ; one built by Charles J. Adams of 
Bangor, three miles south of Skerry, and sold to D. Adolphus Dunn, 
on whose hands it was twice burned during the year 1885, and after 
which it was owned by Michael Donahue, and again burned and the 
site abandoned ; one built by Warren Aldrich three miles south of the 
Adams mill (sold to George Walker, and now torn down) ; one in the 
western part of the town, built and operated by William C. Betterly; 
and the "priest" mill, built by H. Y. Tarbell, and afterward owned by 
Father Francis of Malone, James Dwyer, David McGivney, McGivney 
& G. C. Stevens, and finally by McGivney again, during which latter 
ownership it burned, and was not rebuilt. There may also have been 
earlier mills, but none of them large. 

Brandon formerly had two starch factories — one north of the 
Center, built by J. V. R. Bowles and Jonathan Farr, who sold to 
Benjamin and Stoughton Lawrence and they to Hannibal Wilcox ; and 
the other built by Lyman Weeks. Both went up in flames. 

It has also had at least two creameries, one of which is at Skerry, 
and still running. It was built by Gains A. Lane about 1880, and sold 
to Fred Lawrence. It was next sold to Norman Wilson, who now owns 
it. The other was built by George Taylor, in the western part of the 
town, near the Bangor line. It was burned. 

The population of Brandon fifty-eight years ago was eight hundred, 
and the gain since then has been less than one hundred, though this 



204 History of Franklin County 

does not take into consideration the loss by the setting oft; to other 
towns of the southern townships. There is no ground for reasonable 
hope that the number may ever increase, because, as has been seen, there 
are no lands that may be converted into farms, nor waters on whose 
shores a summer hotel business might be developed. Therefore, the 
outlook would seem to be for a decrease in the number of inhabitants 
as lumbering operations fall off. The only settlement other than 
Eeynoldston which has even a resemblance to a hamlet is Skerry, at 
which tbere are a store, a blacksmith shop and a scattering of houses. 

Before Brandon lost its southern townships to Harrietstown and 
Santa Clara it had a few settlers around the head of Upper Saranac 
Lake, forty-odd miles as the crow flies, and perhaps seventy miles by 
highway, from the center of town government. There were not enough 
of them to justify the creation of an election district in their section, 
and it speaks well for the quality of their citizenship that at least a 
part of them could be j^ersuaded in years of intense political interest or 
excitement to make the long and arduous journey from their homes in 
order to cast their votes. The memory of such a public service ought to 
shame the men of to-day who shirk the duty of registering and voting 
even in cases where they need take hardly more than a step from their 
residences or places of business in order to exercise the privilege of the 
electoral franchise. 

The dismemberment of Brandon alluded to was fought strenuously 
by its supervisors for several years because the lands set off to be added 
to Harrietstown and to create Santa Clara, amounting to almost a 
quarter of a million acres, owned by nonresidents, paid something like 
two-thirds of the town's entire tax levy. Since the dismemberment the 
remaining nonresident lands have borne only about one-fifth of the tax. 
Thus the two partitions added heavily to the tax burdens of the resi- 
dents — requiring them following the first partition to contribute a 
half instead of merely a third of the town's expenses, and after the 
second nearly four-fifths instead of the original third part. 

An almost forgotten murder occurred in Brandon in 1SG.2. Peter 
Mulholland, a dissipated and violent character, was visited on the day 
of the crime by an associate of like habits, who brought liquor with 
him. Mulholland proceeded to get drunk almost to the degree of uncon- 
sciousness, but yet was able to see, or fancied that he saAv, improper 
conduct between his guest and his wife. Crawling along the floor, Mul- 
holland lun°ed with a knife at his visitor, as is believed, but struck his 



Brandon 205 

wife instead, the knife penetrating her abdomen. The woman lived 
until the next day, but utterly refused to make any statement to 
Coroner Lyndon K. Hutchins in explanation of her condition, or to 
inculpate anybody. Mulholland was arrested and indicted. While 
awaiting trial he made a confession to the district attorney, and upon 
arraignment pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree. He was 
sentenced to imprisonment at Dannemora for ten years. 

If Brandon had any church history of date earlier than 1848 I have 
been unable to ascertain it. In that year it had a Baptist organization, 
which numbered fifty-two members, and at about that time was served 
by Elder Thayer of Burke as pastor, or at least as preacher. L. C. 
Herrick was pastor also in 1848, and John C. Smith in 1853 and 1854 
— serving at Burke also. The society was manifestly poor, as it reported 
to the St. Lawrence Baptist Association in 1848 that it could not afford 
to maintain a pastor, but could raise fifty dollars a year for " support 
of preaching." In 1855 it reported that some who had been regarded 
as pillars in the church had left them, and in 1856 that the church was 
feeble. In 1857 it reported forty-three members, and after that date 
no mention of the Brandon society appears in the association's 
proceedings. 

There seems to have been no regular church organization in the town 
after the collapse of the Baptist society until 1891, when the First Con- 
gregational Society of Brandon was incorporated, and a church edifice 
erected the same year at Skerry. While the Baptist organization was m 
existence, and from that time continuously down to 1891, religious 
services were held, though usually with considerable irregularity, in 
school houses in one or another part of the town — sometimes bv a 
clergyman of one denomination, and then by another, from Bangor. 
Bev. Alonzo Wells preached there for a time. Since 1891 the church 
has had a pastor regularly for most of the time, but not exclusively its 
own — the Congregational minister at Bangor so serving usually. In 
1916 and 1917 before entering the army as a chaplain Rev.. J. B. 
Webster, of the Malone Baptist church, officiated there Sunday 
afternoons. 

A Holiness church was built near Skerry in 1905. It has a pastor, 
and enjoys services regularly. 

Rev. Father Lauzon of North Bangor officiates at intervals at 
Revnoldston. 



CHAPTER IX 
BRIGHTON 

The town of Brighton comprises all of township eighteen of great 
tract one of Macomb's purchase and the south half of township fifteen. 
It was set off from Duane in November, 1858, and takes its name from 
a town in England. Until about twenty years ago it was merely what 
the famous hotel and summer resort known as Paul Smiths made it. 
At the date of its erection it had about two hundred inhabitants, the 
number decreasing in 1865 to one hundred and sixty, and never exceed- 
ing five hundred until 1892, since when the population has remained 
almost stationary — never falling under seven hundred and never quite 
reaching eight hundred. The State enumeration of 1915 gives it as 
seven hundred and forty-one. The growth that the town has had in 
the last quarter of a century has come principally from the establish- 
ment of institutions and boarding houses for the accommodation of 
people afflicted Avith tuberculosis, and from the settlement made at 
Gabriels following the opening of the Dr. Webb railroad through the 
Adirondacks. 

The earliest known settlers in Brighton were Moses Follensby, 
Samuel Johnson and Amos and Levi Bice. The date of Follensby's 
locating is unknown, but he disappeared in 1823, without having left 
any impress upon the town except the giving of his name to two or 
three of its waters. Johnson is understood to have settled in 1815 about 
two miles east of Paul Smiths, and the Bices about 1819 or 1820 — 
Levi near Paul Smiths, close to the site of St. John's Church in the 
Wilderness, where he is said to have built a primitive grist mill, and 
Amos farther north, at what is now known as MacCollom's. Peter 
Sabattis (St. Baptist), a St. Begis Indian, frequented the woods and 
waters of Brighton at an early time, and found rare good hunting and 
fishing. Oliver Keese and Thomas A. Tomlinson came into the town 
in 1851, and built and operated a sawmill three miles west of Paul 
Smiths, which was afterward run for a time by McLean, who had earlier 
been at Franklin Falls. James M. Wardner located about 1854 at 
Bainbow Lake, and kept a hotel of modest proportions for a generation 
or more. Later he rebuilt, after the burning of his original house, and 

[2061 



Brighton 207 

the new hotel was much larger and better in all respects. Mr. Wardner 
was for six years a school commissioner of the county. His hotel prop- 
erty was acquired after his death by the Independent Order of 
Foresters, and converted into the Bainbow Sanatorium for the care and 
treatment of members of the order suffering from tuberculosis. The 
institution was opened July 10, 1910, can accommodate fifty patients, 
and in 1915 had an average of about thirty-five. Dr. J. Seymour Emans, 
of New York, himself tuberculous, is the physician in charge. 

Apollos A. Smith, familiarly known the world over as " Paul," came 
to Brighton in 1859 from the vicinity of Loon Lake, where he had 
lpcated ten years earlier. He was born in Vermont August 20, 1825, 
and previous to removal to the Adirondack's had been a boatman on 
Lake Champlain. At Loon Lake he conducted a small hotel for a time, 
and then the house called Hunters' Home. In Brighton Mr. Smith 
bought fifty acres of land on what was then known as Follensby Pond, 
but now as the Lower St. Begis, for three hundred dollars, the grantor 
reserving the pine suitable for saw logs. He erected a primitive hotel 
building, and from time to time during the next twenty years added 
nearly a thousand acres to his original purchase at a cost of about five 
thousand live hundred dollars. In the meantime the original hotel 
building, which had been little more than a shack, had given place to a 
much larger and finer structure, with boat houses and other appurtenant 
buildings, the whole comprising the finest accommodations for sports- 
men and pleasure seekers then known in all the Adirondack region. 
To these many other and large . improvements have since been made. 
Many factors entered into this great development, not the least of which 
was Mr. Smith's personality. An attractive location, the fine fishing 
that the surrounding waters afforded, and a table and general appoint- 
ments that equaled those of the best city hostelries all counted for suc- 
cess, of course, but without Paul himself the establishment could not 
have so prospered and so gained and held the affection of guests. Though 
he had lacked early advantages, Mr. Smith had a native ability, a 
readiness of wit and a shrewdness of judgment that even the wizards of 
industrial enterprises and the masters of "big business," as well as 
scholars and statesmen, who became his guests were quick to recognize 
as entitling him to a place among them, and disposed them to fellow- 
ship with him on the plane of equality — esteeming him not merely as 
their entertainer, but as their friend. Genial, an irrepressible joker 
whose quips and jests never stung, a raconteur whose reminiscences and 



208 History of Franklin County 

anecdotes always interested and amused, Mr. Smith held his own easily 
in any circle, and was as popular as he was widely known. Nor was 
Mrs. Smith less contritmtory to the success of the resort. Her admirable 
qualities of womanhood, and genius as housewife and chatelaine, were 
invaluable in the establishment, and endeared her to all visitors. 

Thus Paul Smiths gained a world-wide fame, and gave an enjoyment 
to its guests that convinced them that there was no other place like it, 
and brought them back summer after summer to delight in its home- 
like atmosphere, and to build up among themselves friendships that 
endured. From the mere fifty acres of shore front and encompassing 
forest with which the resort started, it has grown to be a private park 
of thirty thousand acres, and a hotel with annex, casino, cottages, work- 
shops, etc., that can accommodate live hundred guests, with side lines 
which include a sawmill turning out fifty thousand feet of lumber 
daily; an electric railway seven miles in length of standard guage and 
equipment, connecting with the New York Central at Lake Clear ; and 
a power development plant at Franklin Falls and Union Falls generat- 
ing five thousand horse power, whose transmission lines furnish light 
and power to Ausable Forks, Bloomingdale, Saranac Lake and adjacent 
country, Paul Smiths, Gabriels, Lake Clear and the St. Eegis and 
Osgood chain of lakes, including the William Rockefeller property, with 
extensions planned to reach Lyon Mountain, Port Henry, Tupper Lake 
and the Adirondack Iron Works in Fssex county. In the summer 
season the business employs a hundred women and a hundred and fifty 
men. The' establishment has a store stocked to meet all of the require- 
ments or fancies of any camp or guest; a local telephone system of a 
hundred instruments with long-distance connections; a telegraph line: 
general work shops; golf grounds and club house; boat houses filled 
with skiffs, sail boats, and steam and electric launches ; billiard parlors ; 
bowling alleys ; and a garage for the accommodation of motorists among 
the guests, and containing hotel cars for hire. Besides the fourteen cot- 
tages which are a part of the hotel system, there are about seventy-five 
'•amps in the immediate vicinity privately owned by men of wealth, 
and which represent an outlay of from twenty-five thousand dollars to a 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars each, and the best of which com- 
mand ten thousand dollars a season when rented. Many of these are as 
luxuriously and completely appointed as any city home — electrically 
lighted, with modern plumbing, long-distance telephones, and private 
ma'-adani roads leading to the public highways. Among the camp 



Brighton 209 

owners here have been: Whitelaw Reid, H. McK. Twombley, Dr. E. U 
Trudeau, George H. Earle, Jr., William W. MeAlpin, Anson Phelps 
Stokes, Robert Ganett, George Pales Baker, Robert Hoe, and others of 
similar eminence. These and others, campers or inmates of the hotel 
itself, make a congenial company, and not infrequently during the 
season unite in giving entertainments or in holding fairs, the proceeds 
of which are generally applied to some worthy local institution or enter- 
prise. Xet receipts at these affairs not uncommonly reach two or three 
thousand dollars, and St. John's Church in the Wilderness, nearby, and 
the Trudeau Sanatorium at Saranac Lake have in particular benefited 
from them. 

The Paul Smith Hotel and allied undertakings have been owned and 
managed since the death of the elder Mr. Smith, which occurred in 
1912, by his sons, Phelps and Paul. 

Sanatorium Gabriels, named in honor of the bishop of the Catholic 
diocese of Ogdensburg, dates from 1895, though not dedicated and 
opened until July, 1897, and the story of its founding and development 
is exceedingly interesting, and amazing as well. Sister Mary of Per- 
petual Help Kieran, of the order of Sisters of Mercy, who became a 
postulant at Malone when a convent school was conducted on the 
corner of Main and Fort Covington streets forty odd years ago, and 
upon the failure of that project located for a time at Hogansburgh, was 
the originator of the institution. Only a woman of remarkable per- 
sonality, untiring energy, supreme faith and determined persistence 
could have carried the enterprise through. She entered upon it with 
but the beggarly sum of fifteen dollars at her command, and yet in the 
course of a few years a site had been acquired, a number of buildings 
erected, an administrative force of nurses and physicians assembled, and 
more than a hundred tuberculous patients per annum were being cared 
for. Surely here was a marvelous work, and, while the world speaks of 
it as Sister Mary's, she herself always said simply, " God did it." 
Sister Mary died at the institution in July, 1914, admired and respected 
wherever known, and deeply loved by those with whom she had ever 
been closely associated. 

The only building to be had when Sister Mary entered upon the work 
was a cheap log cabin, and about the only accessories a donkey and cart 
that a friend contributed. Sister Mary and her single co-worker 
occupied the cabin until something better could be had. Dr. W. Seward 
Wefob and Paul Smith each gave fifty acres of land for a site, and a 



210 History of Franklin County 

third fifty was bought. In addition, there are several hundred acres 
adjacent owned by the State, which serve to protect the sanatorium 
against undesirable encroachments, and in effect enlarge its grounds to 
that extent. Men of wealth in New York and elsewhere, who are 
summer residents in the vicinity, and women of the Catholic faith pos- 
sessed of ample fortunes, gave generously to the enterprise, so that, 
joined to the earnest co-operation of Bishop Gabriels, funds were 
realized for the erection of buildings. The 'site chosen for these was an 
elevation, now called Sunrise Mount, in conspicuous view from the 
railroad, and on which a dozen or more structures have been reared at 
a cost of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The institution carries 
a debt of something like seventy-five thousand dollars. The largest of 
the group of buildings is " Restawhile," and above the entrance to it 
stands out the invitation: "Come apart to the wilderness, and rest 
awhile.'' There are also the administration building,* groups of cot- 
tages, a chapel, laundry, etc. — a dozen or more structures in all. The 
institution has its own electric light plant and system of water supply, 
operates a farm of two hundred acres, and issues quarterly a magazine 
entitled Forest Leaves, which is a most creditable publication both 
as to appearance and literary merit. Though under the management of 
a distinctively Catholic order, the sanatorium is nonsectarian so far as 
relates to the admission and care of patients, who pay if able to do so, 
but are not denied reception and equal attention when room is available 
even if without means. The management prides itself that the very 
best professional skill obtainable composes the staff of physicians, 
nurses, and attendants general])*, and that a gratifying and encouraging 
percentage of patients released show entire recovery or marked improve- 
ment. H. J. Blankemeyer is the resident physician, and F. G. Mahoney 
assistant. The advisory medical committee includes a number of the 
most eminent physicians resident in New York city, with others of like 
rank practising elsewhere. A general advisory committee is composed 
of a number of men of high standing both in business and in a public 
way. 



* The administration building was completely destroyed, with most of its con- 
tents, by fire January 18, 1016, entailing a loss estimated by the Sister Superior 
at forty thousand dollars. This estimate is based, however, not on the cost of 
the building burned, but upon the cost of replacing and refurnishing it. There 
was an insurance of only seven thousand dollars on the property. A campaign 
is to be made for subscriptions for rebuilding, and it is hoped to have the new 
structure constructed in the near future. At the time of the fire there were 
about thirty patients in the building, all of whom were removed to neighboring 
cottages without injury. 



Brighton 211 

The dining room of the institution was furnished by former Governor 
Flower; one patient's room by ex-Governor Morton; a second by the 
Benjamin Harrison family, called the B. H. McKee room; a third by 
Paul Smith and a fourth by contributors residing in Malone. The 
buildings throughout are finished in hard wood, and many of the sleep- 
ing rooms have fire-places. The system of ventilation, plumbing and 
drainage is scientifically planned, and executed in a thorough and 
workmanlike manner. Xeither care nor expense has been spared for 
these particulars. 

Services in the chapel are held regularly by priests who are patients 
or by the resident priest at Lake Clear. 

The sanatorium's capacity is about fifty, but as those treated are con- 
tinually going and coming nearer three times that number are cared 
for in the course of a year. 

The hamlet of Gabriels sprang up with the building of the Adiron- 
dack and St. Lawrence Railway in 1892. There is nothing in the 
location except the railroad (not even good farming land) to attract 
settlement or to serve as a basis for business. Yet from a scrub barrens 
twenty-odd years ago it has grown to a place of perhaps two hundred 
inhabitants, and consists of the Sanatorium Gabriels, two stores, one 
small hotel (the Robear House), a blacksmith shop, a garage, and, 
unfortunately, three saloons.* Until the Paul Smith Electric Railroad 
was built, with Lake Clear Junction as its eastern terminus, Gabriels 
was the point of arrival and departure of nearly all visitors to Paul 
Smiths. 

Considering the paucity of its population and the small aggregate 
value of its taxable property, Brighton has always exhibited a good deal 
of public spirit and enterprise. Forty years ago it had won the dis- 
tinction of having the best roads and the neatest school houses in the 
county, and it was the first of our towns to bond itself for building a 
macadam highway. It has a neat and sufficient town bouse on the road 
leading from Paul Smiths to Gabriels and Rainbow. Its good farming 
lands are extremely limited in area, to which handicap is to be added 
the prevalence of late and early frosts, so that agrictilture offers only 
indifferent opportunity, though the raising of vegetables and the pro- 
duction of milk for the Paul Smith Hotel are prosecuted to some 
extent. The occupation of a large percentage of the male inhabitants 
is guiding, and many of these guides have located in close vicinity to 



The saloons have been closed since this was written. 



212 History of Franklin County 

Paul Smiths, making the settlement here greater than at any other 
point in the town except Gabriels. The cottages of the guides are 
generally neat and comfortable, and each has its well kept garden. One 
of these localities goes by the name of k ' Easy street," which is perhaps 
a misnomer, because while the business of modern guiding is not as 
strenuous as the service formerly required by sportsmen, and the pay 
is excellent, the season is short, with the consequence that the surplus 
of wages over the cost of living in summer is usually found to be only 
sufficient to carry a guide and his family through the winter, thus 
leaving no balance, or only a small one, for the year as a whole. 

The writer's first experience in Adirondack hunting and fishing was 
in Brighton in 1863. Game laws were then practically a dead letter, 
and deer hunting in August, openly with dogs, was indulged in as a 
matter of course. But this kind of hunting interested me far less than 
pigeon shooting. The numbers of pigeons in Brighton in 1863 were 
so great that the flocks almost darkened the sky, and when at rest, 
usually on a dead pine, they so covered its branches that nothing of the 
tree itself except the trunk could be distinguished. Their favorite feed- 
ing grounds "were the blueberry patches and the grain fields of the few 
lands under cultivation in the vicinity. I recall that near the hotel of 
Mr. Wardner there was a field of buckwheat, and that one morning the 
ground was literally black with the birds feasting on the grain. Mr. 
Wardner crept near to it with a single-barrel shotgun, and, firing into 
the flock, killed twenty-seven birds at a single shot: and on the shore 
of Eainbow it was no trick at all for me at one discharge of my gun to 
drop four or five out of a tree or as the pigeons rose in flight. S. H. 
Hammond, an Albany editor, made a trip of several weeks' duration 
through the wilderness in 1853 from Chazy Lake to Chateaugay Lake, 
Meacham, St. Begis Lake, the Saranacs and Tupper Lake, and in a 
published account of his experiences told of having visited a pigeon- 
roost near the latter water: "We were startled in the gray twilight of 
the morning by a distant roaring; not like a waterfall, or far-off 
thunder, but partaking of both. * * * As the light grew more dis- 
tinct we saw vast flocks of wild pigeons, winging their way in different 
directions across the lake, but all appearing to have a common starting 
point in the forest, a mile or more down the lake. ' I understand it all 
now,' said my guide ; ' there's a pigeon roost down there.' * * * 
We had no difficulty in finding it, for the thundering sound of those 
vast flocks, as they started from their perches, led us on. About a mile 



Brighton 213 

from the lake we came to the outer edge of the roost. Hundreds of 
thousands of pigeons had flown away that morning, and yet there were 
hundreds of thousands, and perhaps many millions, old and young, 
there yet. It covered acres and acres — I have no idea how many, for 
I did not go round it. The trees were not of large growth, being mostly 
of spruce and stunted birch, hemlock and elm, but every one was loaded 
with nests. In every crotch, on every branch that would support one, 
was a nestful of all sizes, from the little downy thing just escaped from 
the shell to the full-grown one just ready to fly away. * * * The 
great limbs of the trees outside of the brooding place were broken and 
hanging clown, being unable to sustain the weight of the thousands that 
perched upon them." Mr. Hammond tells, further, of hawks and car- 
rion birds and foxes lurking about the roost, apparently gorged with 
food that they had raped from it. To-day not a single bird of the 
species is known to be in existence. 

The only hotel in Brighton conducted especially for sportsmen and 
pleasure seekers other than Wardner's and Paul Smiths is known as 
" MacCollom's," situate near Lake Meacham, and about thirty miles 
south of Malone. It was originally a small log structure, built by 
Amos Rice, and then owned and managed by the sturdy Scotchman 
from whom it took its name. In MacCollom's day it catered only to 
those who sought good deer hunting and were willing to accept rude 
accommodations. Game in the vicinity was abundant, and "Mac's" 
interest for the success of his guests and his skill as a woodsman were 
so marked that fine sport was always enjoyed. Clarence McArthur suc- 
ceeded MacCollom, and greatly enlarged and improved the house. But 
upon his death it was found to be heavily incumbered, and was sold 
under mortgage foreclosure. Malone creditors were the purchasers, 
and these subsequently sold to Colonel William C. Skinner, of Hartford, 
who is the present owner, but who has nothing to do with the manage- 
ment of the hotel. In recent years it has come to entertain a different 
class of guests — vacationists and idlers rather than hunters. It is a 
favorite resort for Malone people, especially for motoring parties who 
go there for a Sunday dinner. 

Brighton's first church is the Church of St. John in the Wilderness, 
near Paul Smiths, and was the outgrowth of services by Episcopalian 
ih igymen stopping at the hotel, held in the hotel parlor from time to 
time prior to 1876. In August of that year Bishop Doane visited the 
place, and officiated at services in the hotel. A lot had already been 



214 History of Franklin County 

given for a church by Mr. Smith and Mrs. S. C. Faitoute of New 
Jersey, and some pledges of funds obtained for building a " log 
chapel," which was dedicated in August, 1877, though not listed as a 
mission in the records of the diocese until 1878. The late Dr. E. L. 
Trudeau had supervision of the erection of the chapel, and except such 
amounts as were contributed by guests at Paul Smiths the funds were 
raised by Mrs. Julia A. Livingstone of New York. The chapel originally 
had a seating capacity of two hundred, which was increased by seventy- 
five in 1893 through the erection of a transept. The church is free from 
debt. Services are held in it regularly throughout the summer, but not 
in winter. 

The Adirondack Mission of the Presbytery of Champlain was created 
in 1889, when and a part of the time since it has included Saranac 
Lake, Tupper Lake, Piercefield, Moody, Paul Smiths, MacCollom's, 
Harrietstown, Lake Clear, Island Chapel in Upper Saranac Lake, 
Corey's, Childwold, Guide Board in Waverly, and Santa Clara. A 
number of the places named have now become independent churches. 
A church building was erected at Keeses Mill, three miles from Paul 
Smiths, about 1900, when Eev. Wm. B. Dusk officiated as pastor there 
until 1906. From that time until 1909 there appears to have been no 
regular resident pastor, but in the latter year Eev. T. Bertram Anderson 
became superintendent of the entire mission and pastor of the church 
at Keeses Mill, which relation he still holds. His territory as superin- 
tendent of the mission covers four hundred square miles and embraces 
nine preaching stations, at all of which except MacCollom's and Santa 
Clara churches have been built. Divinity students officiate at the various 
missions throughout the summer season. The cost of maintaining the 
mission is about three thousand dollars a year, a goodly part of which 
is subscribed by visitors to the region. 

A Methodist Episcopal church on the road between Paul Smiths and 
Gabriels was erected about 1893, the money therefor having been raised 
by Mrs. Smith, though herself a Presbyterian. Services are conducted 
every other Sunday by the clergyman resident at Bloomingdale, who 
officiates at Eainbow also once a fortnight. 

The Church of Angel Gabriel at Paul Smiths was organized in 
1894 by Eev. Ferdinand J. Lussier, who was at the time rector of the 
church at Brandon. It is located about a quarter of a mile from Paul 
Smiths, and the edifice must have been erected soon after the mission 
was established, as the church was blessed in 189G under Eev. Michael 



Brighton 215 

Holland, who, located at Tupper Lake, was then serving the mission. 
It has since heen attended by the priests at Tupper Lake, Brandon, 
Derrick and Lake Clear Junction. 

In addition, there is a Catholic chapel connected with the Sanatorium 
Gabriels. 

Nonresident lands are all wilderness, and necessitate no town expense 
except when forest fires occur. The possession of such tracts by a town 
tends to lighten the tax burdens of residents, and in the hope of gaining 
such advantage Brighton attempted in 1877 to have a township and a 
half taken from Brandon and added to itself, but the board of super- 
visors refused to approve. 



CHAPTER X 
BURKE 

Burke was erected from Chateaugay April 26, 184-1, being the final 
partition of Chateaugay, which was mother to all of the towns now 
comprising the county. It was proposed to call the new division Birney, 
in honor of the Liberty candidate for President in 1841, but the Legis- 
lature evidently preferred the name of the English statesman, and so, 
disregarding the prayer of the petition, substituted Burke. It is one of 
the smaller towns in area, assessed as containing 27,463 acres. The 
population in 1845 was 1,285, which increased to 2,240 in 1860, 
declined to 1,920 during the civil war, gained two hundred in the next 
ten years, and then remained practically stationary until 1892, when 
another decline began. In 1910 the population was only 1,772, but in 
1915 had increased to 1,835. Until it was erected into a town the place 
had been known as West Chateaugay. 

Burke is watered principally by brooks and the Little Trout river, 
which enters the town from Bellmont at the extreme southeastern 
corner, and takes a northwesterly course into Constable. The Chateaugay 
river cuts across the extreme northeastern corner of the town, and 
Trout river across the extreme southwestern corner — hardly more than 
a mile of each being in Burke. The Rutland Railroad runs through 
the south third of the town, and has a station nearly midway between 
the Chateaugay border on the east and Malone on the west. An 
improved county highway, extending from Malone to Chateaugay, 
passes through the town in the southern part, and a State road follows 
the so-called north route, running through Burke Center and Thayer's 
Corners. Burke was one of the first towns in the county to undertake 
for itself the construction of stone roads, and has done some excellent 
work under this system. 

Burke's surface is undulating, as no one familiar with its nomen- 
clature or its topography would ever doubt. The locality near the rail- 
road station is the " Hollow ; " half a mile distant is the " East 
Hollow ; " a mile north is " Taylor's Hollow ; " and a mile or two west 
of that is " Hawks's Hollow ; " while in other districts, wherever a river 
or a brook flows, there are hollows almost innumerable, but not dis- 

[2161 



Burke 217 

languished by names. The soil, while not the most productive in the 

comity, is yet of so good an average that intelligent farming is profit- 
able, and consequently the general condition of the people prosperous. 

The principal settlement in the town is near the railroad, extending 
both north and south of the station. Formerly, if not more populous, it 
was more important industrially, as at one time it had a sawmill. 
tannery, starch factory and a planing mill, which now are all out of 
existence. There remain a school house, a hotel, a creamery, a milk 
shipping station, a feed mill, two or three small shops, a half dozen 
stores, and a small group of dwelling houses, a Grange hall and an 
Odd Fellows' hall, and a Methodist and a Catholic church. The resi- 
dences are generally of a hetter type and better kept up than are com- 
monly found in so small a place, and testify in their appearance to 
enterprise and comfortable circumstances on the part of the owners. 
The place has been greatly improved from its former estate, when 
pretty much everything was centered cither in the "Hollow" or in the 
" East Hollow," whereas now, the mills having disappeared and stores. 
hotels and dwellings there having been burned, almost everything is 
on the hill on the east side of the river, a vastly better location. The 
hamlet has a gravity system of water works and it and even the farming 
sections are electrically lighted from the power development in 
Chateaugay. The population is probably at least three hundred. 

At Burke Center, where it seemed until the railroad was built that 
the larger settlement might be, there are the town house (built in 1851 
and 1852), a Presbyterian church, the store of Lorenzo W. Thayer 
(the same structure built by Joseph Goodspeed in 1828), and a half 
dozen dwelling houses. 

Sun represents merely the center of the activities of 'George and 
Henry Jordan a few years ago, when they did a driving business at that 
point — conducting a large farm, a creamery, a store, shops and a 
steam sawmill. Nothing now remains except a milk skimming station, 
the store kept by J. W. Taillon, and two or three residences. 

Thayer's Corners lies directly east of Burke Center, near the 
Chateaugay line. Formerly the Sons of Temperance had a two-story 
building here, with the first floor used for religious meetings and the 
second as a lodge room, but now burned. There are ten or a dozen 
dwelling houses in the locality, and a store. At one time there was a 
Baptist church, but the society is no longer alive. 

The first settlers came mostlv from Vermont earlier than 1800, or 



218 History of Franklin County 

nearly a half century before the town was erected, and even before the 
district was known as West Chateaugay. A few came a little later from 
Canada, and settled principally in the north part of the town. Gates 
Hoit, who was in Chateaugay in 1800 or before, undertook some years 
afterward to make a list of all who had been in the township at the 
time of his arrival, but omitted a number. This list included Jehial 
Barnum, Jr., Azur Hawks, John S. and James S. Allen, Noah Lee and 
Warren Botsforcl. To these I am able to add Moses Eggleston, Bufus 
Jones, Samuel Haight, Israel Thayer, Benjamin and Lewis Graves, 
Simeon Beed, Jr., and Ira Smith as having been there in 1800 or hav- 
ing arrived soon afterward. Deed dates are not conclusive, of course, 
for in the period in question settlers usually held their lands only under 
contract from their initial occupancy until payments under the con- 
tracts had been completed, when actual conveyance would be made. 
Yet John Allen received his deed in 1798, Benjamin Graves in 1799, 
Mr. Thayer and Mr. Hawks in 1801, Mr. Beed in 1802, Reuben Allen 
in 1803, and Mr. Smith and Lewis Graves in 1805, while Mr. Thayer, 
Mr. Hawks, Mr. Haight and Mr. Lee had given mortgages as early as 
1798, proving that the section which is now Burke had settlement 
earlier than any other part of the county except Chateaugay itself. 
Mr. Barnum was the son of Jehial Barnum, who settled in Bangor 
about 1807, and came directly from Vermont. He is understood to 
have been the first settler, probably in 1797, and owned several hundred 
acres of land — a single sale made by him in 1805 having been five 
hundred and twenty acres. He was uncle to Phineas T. Barnum, the 
showman. In the dozen or fifteen years following 1805 arrivals included 
James Hatch, Ira Covey, Dorastus Fitch, Erastus and Newman Finney, 
Dr. Stephen F. Morse, Joshua Nichols, James Brewer, John Mitchell, 
Joel Andrews, Timothy Beaman, Ezra Stiles, Joseph Goodspeed, 
Reuben Smith (a brother of Ira), William Hilliker, John Twaddle, 
Peter Bush and Nathaniel and Orada Day, and doubtless others whose 
names are not recalled. In checking up these lists the contrast with 
conditions in Bangor is both striking and melancholy. Where Bangor 
shows a notably large number of descendants of the original stock still 
abiding there, Burke has scarcely any. Allen, Morse, Fitch, Finney, 
Jones and Smith are almost, or quite, the only names borne by the 
early settlers to be found now upon the election registers or assessment 
rolls of the town, and some even of these perhaps do not trace their 
lineage to the pioneers, the families of whom have become extinct or 



Burke 219 

removed elsewhere. Like the pioneers in other towns, they were mainly 
strong, manly men, fitted to found and manage the affairs of a com- 
munity upon orderly lines, and give it enterprise and character. 

Azur Hawks resided for a long time at the forks of the Fort Coving- 
ton-Malone road, which locality thus came to take the name " Hawks's 
Hollow,"' and was a lieutenant in the State militia in 1808 and a 
captain in 1809. James S. Allen was the first clerk of the county of 
Franklin, in 1808. Noah Lee removed to Malone and then to Bangor 
at an early day. Moses Eggleston lived near Thayer's Corners, and is 
said to have come from Vermont on horseback, carrying money in a 
bag, and armed with a pitchfork for its defense. He was an ensign in 
a militia company in 1808, a captain in the war of 1812, and a lieu- 
tenant-colonel in 1818. His company in 181-1 appears to have been 
recruited in Chateaugay, and to have seen no service except for a few 
days on the march to and from Plattsburgh, which was not reached 
until after tbe battle had been fought. The route taken was south from 
the Chateaugay four corners to near the Bennett place, whence it led 
east through the forest along a mere trail to the Eoberts tavern stand, 
eight miles east of the four corners. The turnpike was thought to be 
too near Canada to be safe against attack by the enemy. Of the com- 
pany's members who resided in the territory now embraced in Burke 
there were Israel Thayer, first lieutenant, Warren Botsford, Jehial 
Barnum, Jr., Simeon Hawks and Nathaniel and Orada Day. Addis K. 
Botsford, formerly school commissioner and until his death a practising 
lawyer at Saranac Lake, and Elmer Botsford, a prominent attorney at 
Plattsburgh, as well as Ray Perrigo of Burke, are grandsons of Warren 
Botsford. Ira Smith had no sons, but Reuben had Samuel, Benjamin, 
Arthur and John, each of whom left male descendants ; and yet the 
only ones of this line bearing the name Smith now in the town are 
George A., his three sons and a grandson and his brother Samuel. At 
one time Reuben and his son, Samuel, owned almost all of the land in 
and about Burke Hollow, and were proprietors of nearly all of the 
business concerns there — -store, shops, sawmill, etc. Arthur Smith 
(father of Fred Smith of the Smith House, Malone) and Abram G. 
Smith (the latter of another family) owned most of the little not in 
the hands of Reuben and Samuel. Rufus Jones was the grandfather of 
George, now a merchant. Ezra Stiles, who had been an officer in the 
war of 1812, was the Methodist class leader in Burke, was one of the 
early merchants, and later removed to Fort Covington, where he became 



220 History or Franklin County 

customs officer and a militia colonel. He was an unsuccessful candi- 
date for State Senator in 1871, and was an uncle of Ezra Goodspeed, 
now of Chateauga} r , to whom the writer is indebted for a good deal of 
the information contained in this sketch. Mr. Goodspeed is also a 
grandson of Jehial Barnum, Jr. Mr. Reed, though married four times, 
has no known descendants. The only descendant of Israel Thayer, for 
whom Thayer's Corners was named, now residing in Burke, is Smith 
W. Thayer, though the latter's father, Lorenzo W., now living in 
Malone, continues in the mercantile business at Burke Center, and 
Warren T. Thayer, a grandson of Israel, lives in Chateaugay, and was 
elected to the Assembly in 1915, 1916 and 1917. Mr. Morse was the 
first physician in the town, and was the grandfather of A. Cady Morse, 
former county superintendent of the poor. Joshua Nichols was first 
judge of the court of common pleas in 1815, and Mr. Mitchell was 
sheriff in 1822., and a militia lieutenant in 1819. He it was who 
executed Videto, the county's first murderer, and it is told that upon 
the occasion he wore his full regimentals, and, mounted on a white 
horse, sprung the trap with the point of his sword, and then rode 
straight for his home in Burke. Benjamin Graves was an unsuccessful 
candidate for the Assembly in 1804. He removed to Plattsburgh. and 
was three times sheriff of Clinton county. John Twaddle came early 
from Canada ; John B., who is in trade in Malone, is his grandson. 
Ira Covey also came from Canada, locating in the northwestern part of 
the town, at the point since called Coveytown. Theodocia Thayer and 
Alfred Deuel are the only surviving descendants in Burke of Lewis 
Graves, and Mrs. Lydia McMillan and Mrs. Fred Wood of Joel 
Andrews. Smith W. Thayer is a great-grandson of Newman Finney, 
and Austin Finney a grandson. Except for these instances, I think 
that none of the early settlers have descendants now living in the town. 
Later years added a considerable number of stirring and sterling men, 
among whom it is not easy to overlook Elisha Marks, Abram G. Smith, 
Martin E. Durkee, Sidney A. Paddock, J. W. and Levi J. Looker, Sey- 
mour Brown, Milo Baldwin, Allen Ellsworth, Ezra S. Goodspeed, George 
B. Smith, L. D. and E. P. Demfng, John McKenzie. Edward Mallon, 
Nathan Mason, John P. Badger, John Featherston, George T. Scovel, 
George B. Greene, Thomas E. Kane, Robert, John and Nelson W. 
Johnston, Sheldon A. Ellsworth, William McKenzie, Thomas S. Craw- 
ford, Corydon S. Chapman, Isaac B. Farrar, and Everett Brothers — 
men who with their sons and the sons of the pioneers established or 



Burke 221 

operated the industries, the hotels and the merchandising of the town 
for a long period. They filled, too, the town offices generally, and with 
such carefulness and efficiency that taxes remained low. 

Particular mention should be made of the three men identified with 
the town who attained to greater distinction than any other of its resi- 
dents, viz., John P. Badger, Fernando Beaman and Philander Deming. 
Mr. Badger had no prominence and had achieved nothing of conse- 
quence until he was approaching forty years of age. He came to the 
county with his parents from New Hampshire, and in his younger 
manhood learned the carpenters trade. Later he was lumberman, mer- 
chant and manufacturer of starch. At about the age of thirty-five 
years he began to take an active interest and part in politics, and almost 
at once became recognized as the Republican leader in Burke. The 
town had always been strongly Democratic, but by personal argument 
and organization Mr. Badger soon converted enough of the electors to 
Republicanism so that that party gained control, and has held it ever 
since. Xot until Mr. Badger was thirty-six years old did he begin the 
study of law, and after 1872, in which year he was elected to the 
Assembly, he completed his course in the Albany Law School, and 
was admitted to the bar. He served three years in the Assembly, and 
then located at Malone, where he continued to reside until his death in 
1912. He had a suave and engaging manner, never antagonized any 
one with bitterness, and ahvays gained his ends by diplomacy and com- 
promise if it was possible to do so without sacrifice of principle. In 
1 s 7 "7 he was elected district attorney and held the office for six years. 
In 1891 he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for justice of 
the supreme court, and failed of success by reason of a deadlock in the 
convention, which continued for weeks. Mr. Badger came to be 
regarded as one of the strongest lawyers in the county, and probably the 
very best before a jury. 

Fernando Beaman, a brother of Timothy, who for a long time was 
one of Burke's most prominent men, died in Michigan in 1882. He 
was a lawyer, and became a member of Congress. Fie was appointed 
United States Senator, but declined the office because of ill health. 

Philander Deming, son of Rev. R. R. Deming, who was pastor of 
the Burke Presbyterian church from 1850 to 1856, was identified with 
the town only as a resident during his youth and later as a summer 
visitor to his brothers. Lucius D. and Fdward P. He had a decided 
literary bent, and was the author of a number of short, captivating 



222 History of Franklin County 

Adirondack stories, most of which were first published in the Atlantic 
Monthly, and then in book form. He became a stenographer, made his 
home in Albany, and, attending a law trial there, took the evidence 
in shorthand for practice. During the course of the case a dispute 
arose concerning some point in the testimony, and the trial judge called 
upon Mr. Deming to read his notes on the question. That was the 
beginning of stenographic court reporting, the incident having demon- 
strated the importance and value of the practice, which was almost 
immediately thereafter instituted, and has ever since been continued. 
It would be deemed impossible now to conduct court business without 
it, and Mr. Deming was its originator. He himself was appointed a 
court reporter, and so served at Albany for many years — his literary 
work having been performed in leisure hours or during vacations. He 
was a gentleman of fine character and striking presence, liberally 
educated, a graceful writer, and an interesting companion. 

But with good citizens bad ones came also or developed there, and 
at one period the hamlet of Burke, known also as the " Hollow "' and 
for a time as Andrusville, was exceedingly tough. That condition did 
not continue for a great while, however, and latterly there has been 
no town in the county with a higher reputation for good citizenship, 
sobriety and morality. Though it has had few men who attained to 
eminence, the number proportioned to the entire population who are 
recognized as notably intelligent, useful in their several walks of life, 
and trustworthy in anything and everything is decidedly large. 

The industries of Burke never included any large establishment, and 
have consisted almost altogether in such mills and shops as used to be 
common in every settlement. They have included only a grist mill, 
saw mills, tanneries, asheries, starch factories, brick yards and stone 
quarries. With the disappearance of the forests and the discontinuance 
of the manufacture of potato starch, even these have gone out of exist- 
ence with the exception of the grist mill and the quarries ; and since con- 
crete came into so common use the quarries are idle, or are worked only 
on a small scale. In addition to the industries above indicated, in years 
so remote that information on the matter is almost impossible of pro- 
curement, Burke had an iron foundry, situate on the Little Trout 
river about a hundred rods below Hawks's Hollow. It was built by 
Reuben Allen and Amos Chipman, and is believed to have made, 
among other wares, stoves and caldron kettles. An attempt was made 
after abandonment of it as a manufactory to move the building up the 



Burke 223 

hill. Thirty yoke of oxen were employed in the undertaking, which 
nevertheless proved a failure. The structure was then taken apart, 
moved piecemeal, aud made into a barn. The history of the establish- 
ment as a foundry can not now be ascertained with any definiteness, 
but it was probably operated for only a short time. 

A vague impression apparently prevails that at one time Daniel 
Smith & Sons had a pottery in Burke, but I have been unable to obtain 
information decisively confirming it, and, so far as I know conclusively, 
the only clay product here was brick. Both John Collins and Seymour 
Brown, and possibly others, operated brick yards years ago. 

The first saw mill was probably built by Alexander Church, as he 
sold a half interest in it in 1811 to James Hatch. It was located nearly 
west of Burke Center, or about a mile and a half northwest from where 
the railroad station now is; subsequent operators of it were Simeon 
Hawks, Walter Dimick and Joseph Goodspeed. It went out of existence 
in 1858. Other saw mills were: One built by Samuel Smith in the 
Hollow, at the bridge, which was run afterward by Day & Badger, Day 
& Greene and William E. Walker; one just below Hawks's Hollow, 
built by George Keep about 1848 or 1850, and abandoned after two or 
three years because it was not profitable; one a half a mile farther 
down the stream, built by William Beaman about 1848 or 1850, and 
owned later by Talmadge Spencer; one yet farther north, built by 
David Darling between 1850 and 1855 ; one in the extreme south- 
western part of the town, known as Skeelsborough, probably built by 
Moses Hutchinson about 1850, and since 1859, until it was carried off 
by a freshet, owned and run by Sidney A. Paddock, who sold Al hem- 
lock dimension stuff in 1864, delivered in Malone, at seven dollars a 
thousand feet — which price was nevertheless more than double that 
realized by Mr. Goodspeed a dozen or fifteen years earlier; one just 
south of the railroad, built by Gibson Smith ; one built by George S. 
Adams about 1865, near the tannery, a short distance above the railroad, 
which was operated afterward for a considerable time by Elisha A. 
Hare, with Corydon S. Chapman as a partner for a couple of years ; 
one, a gang mill, a mile and a half south of the railroad, built by Henry 
B. and Elisha B. Smith, of Chateaugay, about 1855, and aftenvard owned 
and operated by Mr. Hare; one built in 1860 by Joseph Featherston as 
a part of the tannery, near the Adams mill, and owned by Sidney W. 
Gillett, of Malone, from 1864 to 1869, when it burned; one in the 
extreme southeastern section, built by John McKenzie, of Burke, and 



224 History of Franklin County 

James Jordan, of Chateaugay, about 1864 or 1865, and burned in 1871; 
one on the same site as the last preceding, built by James Danford about 
1873, and from which the machinery was removed to Bellmont some- 
thing like twenty years later ; one north of Thayer's Corners, built by 
Martin E. Durkee about 1853 ; one just north of Durkee, built by Amos 
Aldrich, and operated from 1857 to 1862 ; a steam mill, built by George 
and Henry Jordan in the north central part about 1897, and run until 
1905 ; and a small portable steam mill south of Thayer's Corners, oper- 
ated by Otis S. Witherell and John AY. and Daniel Mitchell from about 
1884 to 1900. At the present time there is not a single saw mill in 
Burke. 

Martin Durkee was the father of Colonel Charles Durkee of Malone. 
He was big (weighing nearly three hundred pounds), bright and bluff — ■ 
his language upon occasion being picturesque, not to say lurid. A 
brother, Charles, residing in the "West, was a United States Senator 
from Wisconsin, and Governor of Utah. He died in 1870, and a few 
years ago the Malone Durkees had expectation of realizing a part of the 
fortune which he was supposed to have had, but the securities which 
he had been reported to own could never be found. Judge Adams was 
a Bangor man, and was elected county judge by the Knownothing party 
in 1855. Simeon Hawks is said to have been engaged with James 
Hatch in smuggling cattle into Canada for the British in the War of 
1812, and the story is told that upon one such expedition, being obliged 
to cross the Chateaugay river and unable to swim, he was towed over 
by clinging to the tail of one of the steers. He became a militia ensign 
in 1817 and a lieutenant in 1820. Joseph Goodspeed was for many 
years the political boss of Burke, holding the town securely in the Demo- 
cratic column, and dictating all nominations and the town's affairs gen- 
erally. He was the lieutenant and representative here of Henry B. 
Smith, of Chateaugay, and never lost his grip on the town until John 
P. Badger contested supremacy with him and his son, Ezra, and won 
against them, though infrequently the Republicans had previously 
carried it. 

With the exception of the feed mill of Hill & Darling near the rail- 
road, which is of recent date, Burke has had only one grist mill. It was 
built in 1832 by Jehial Barnum, Jr., and Joseph Goodspeed, and is now 
operated by William McKenzie. Intermediate owners or operators 
include Eli Goodnow, Samuel Starks, T. L. & Harry Douglass, Albert 
Stebbins and John McKenzie. The last named (as good a man and 



Burke 225 

as expert a miller as the county ever had) bought the property in 1860, 
and ran it until 1877. Just below this mill there had been a building, 
erected by Mr. Goodnow for a stave mill, and used later by John W. 
Marks and John P. Badger as a furniture factory, which Mr. McKenzie 
converted into a mill for making pearl barley. This building was 
burned. 

Burke has had four starch factories. The first was built in the 
Hollow in 1846 by Elisha Marks for his brother, Ira. Elisha afterward 
acquired ownership, and ran the mill. Subsequent owners were Myron 
Derby, and Andrew Day in partnership at different periods with George 
B. Greene, John P. Badger and Everett Brothers. It was burned under 
the latter ownership in 1887. 

The Sidney Paddock factory in the southwestern part of the town 
was built prior to 1854, probably by Andrew J. Day. In 1867, when 
the latter was operating the Marks mill, he invaded the Paddock terri- 
tory for stock, and the rivalry thus provoked jumped the price of pota- 
toes to forty-five cents per bushel, creating no little excitement and 
alarm among manufacturers in other towns. The statutes against com- 
binations in restraint of trade had not then been thought of, and a 
meeting of all the manufacturers in the county was held at Malone to 
consider the situation. It was finally agreed that Paddock and Day 
might fight out their own battle as they liked, but that elsewhere forty 
cents should be the maximum price. Starch sold in that year at better 
than seven cents a pound. 

A factory was built in 1857 east of Burke Center by A. J. Day and 
William G. Dickinson of Malone. It burned in 1862 or 1863, and was 
rebuilt by the original owners. It was owned and rim later by George 
T. Scovel alone and in partnership with W. W. & H. E. King of 
Malone, and with George B. Greene; then by Greene & King, Grant 
Wilmarth and Morse & Walker, who tore it down. 

A fourth factory was built by J. J. Jameson in the northern part of 
the town, but was run for only a few years. It burned in 1878. 

There were asheries of course in an early day; four in all; one by 
John Mitchell in the northeastern part of the town; one by Daniel 
Mitchell, near Thayer's Corners; one by Colonel Stiles, near Burke 
Center; and one by Lewis & Andrus on the Canadian frontier. These 
bought black salts from the farmers, converted it into pearl ash, and 
sold the product in Montreal. It was for a long time the only commodity 
that was equivalent to cash. 

8 



226 History of Franklin County 

The town had tanneries, too, but apparently not as soon after the 
first settlements as was usual in most places. Nathaniel Day had one 
in the vicinity of Thayer's Corners, the date of which I have been 
unable to ascertain. Nathaniel Witherell also had one later in the same 
locality, and Hezekiah Olin built one about 1850 in the Hollow, east 
of the bridge, and on the north side of the turnpike, where Hiram 
Cartwright afterward had a shop and planing mill, and still later James 
Toland had a cheese factory. A half mile distant, in the East Hollow, 
Joseph Featherston built one about 1858, which burned in 1860, when 
he built another south of the railroad, near the Adams saw mill, and 
combined a saw mill in the same building, together with a shoe and 
harness shop. This property, which was sold in 1864 to S. W. Gillett 
of Malone, burned in 1869. 

Earlier than 1850 Moses Keefe and George Jordan had a cabinet 
shop in Taylor's Hollow, east of Burke Center, and at about the same 
time and in the same vicinity John Taylor had a chair factory, while 
from 1845 to 1849 Taylor & Baldwin operated a bedstead and wooden 
bowls factory below the Hawks saw mill, near where Sheldon A. Ells- 
worth now lives. The bedsteads were the old-fashioned post and rail 
variety, with seventy-two feet of rope in place of the modern slats and 
springs. E. F. Bellows had a tub and wheelwright shop' near the 
Hollow, which was burned in 1885, when James Danford built a planing 
mill on the same site. This was also burned about 1900. 

Two quarries of a handsome, durable sandstone have been opened — 
one in the extreme southwestern and the other in the southeastern part 
of the town. The former was worked as early as 1850 for stone in 
building the old Northern Bailroad, and then lay idle until 1876, when 
Sidney A. Paddock, its present owner, proceeded to develop it, and filled 
large orders from St. Albans, Vt., and from Chateaugay, Saranac Lake, 
Malone and other places — getting out great smooth flags, window sills. 
foundation facings, etc. The other was formerly owned by Daniel Crip- 
pen, and now by his sons, Martin and Fred. It was worked extensively 
a few years ago by " Jack " Anderson as lessee, whose principal market 
was Montreal. At present the Crippens themselves get out fine stone 
in limited quantities as orders come to them. But with the prevalent 
use of concrete for walks, curbing and even walls the quarries can not 
be operated profitably except on special orders where price is less a 
consideration than appearance. 

Burke's hotels have been numerous. The first one was built prob- 
ably by Charles Dunham, as he had a liquor license in 1805 and 1806, 



Burke 227 

issued by the town authorities of Chateaugay, and James Constable's 
diary of his visits to our county in 1805 notes that he stopped there 
on two occasions. Its location is not determinable, and probably it was 
not long in existence, as it had no license after 1806. Mr. Constable 
refers to it in one place as eleven miles from the southeast corner of 
the town of Constable and five miles from Chateaugay four corners, 
and elsewhere as if it were near the western border of Burke. Another 
inn of about the same period was built by James Hatch at least as 
early as 1806, as he was licensed in that year. It was located at the 
top of the hill west of the Hollow, and still stands, being occupied at 
present by William Porter as a residence. Other landlords there after 
Hatch were John Smith, Samuel Smith and Abram G. Smith, by whose 
estate the property is now owned. James Hatch was the father of 
Harry B. Hatch, a pioneer in the town of Franklin, the grandfather of 
Mrs. 0. W. Moody and Harry Hatch of Malone, and the great grand- 
father of Charles H. Moody of the Franklin House, Malone. He was 
a militia lieutenant in 1817 and a captain in 1820. He removed to 
Ellenburgh about 1829, and kept a hotel there until his death. 

Moses Eggleston had a hotel early east of the Hollow, and Xorman 
Percy one in Xorth Burke between 1840 and 1850. Joshua Beaman had 
one at a very early date a half mile west of Thayer's Corners, and Rufus 
Jones one in a log house just across the road. Chateaugay's town meet- 
ing was held in the latter in 1813, and the general election in the former 
in 1S28 and 1832. Joseph Goodspeed had a tavern from 1831 to 1851 
near the Center, and during a part of the same period Hiram Miner 
kept a temperance house where Fred Countryman now resides, about a 
third of a mile west of Goodspeed's. The sign, " Temperance House," 
is still partly traceable on the front of the building. Mr. Miner was 
the father of the wife of Rev. Andrew M. Millar. Prior to the time 
of Miner this house had been kept by Stephen Cook, and then by Kelson 
Cook. 

Reuben Pike, Sr., had a hotel a mile west of the Hollow, at what is 
now the Fred Baldwin place. In 1844, as once since then, campaign- 
ing was carried on by parties traveling through the county with a four- 
horse rig, and a stop was made at this hotel. William A. Wheeler was 
one of the campaigners, and the party "refreshed" at the bar. when 
the best that the house afforded was served ; and out of the incident grew 
the expression "Pike's best," which everybody used to call Tor thereafter. 

Samuel Smith built a hotel in 1847 or 1848 in the Hollow, on the 



228 History of Franklin County 

east side of the river, kept it himself for a time, and had as successors, 
" Hank " Smith, George S. Adams, Henry Lord, Eeuben Pike, Jr., 
David Schryer and Mary "Wilson; the latter the same woman who kept 
the Hotel Wilson on Catherine street, Malone, when it was burned in 
1913 with so awful a loss of life. The house was at times of a character 
that was very offensive to the good people of the place, and it burned 
during the tenancy of Mrs. Wilson. 

Other hotels that have been located at the Hollow include one south 
of the railroad, kept by E. P. Shandrew; one in the N 1 . W. Johnston 
house, since burned, on the site of Thomas Crawford's present resi- 
dence, kept by William Heading; one called the Eagle Hotel, the first 
door east of the Maple Leaf Hotel, kept by Mrs. Arthur Smith, mother 
of Fred Smith of the Smith House, Malone ; and the Maple Leaf Hotel, 
at the top of the hill on the east side of the river, kept by Henry Lapier. 
The last named is at present the only hotel in the town. 

Burke has had at least nine creameries and two cheese factories. The 
first of the creameries was built in 1874 a mile west of north from the 
railroad station by Henry W. Bellows, and others, located in all dis- 
tricts of the town except south of the railroad, by Ealph N. Bassett, 
C. C. Mason, Eli Darling, Bromley &' Cooper, George and Henry Jordan, 
Woodbury Wentworth and Ketcham & Bassett. One that was at the 
Hollow, which was afterward the Toland cheese factory, and one in the 
eastern part of the town are out of existence. The second cheese fac- 
tory is a feature of the milk shipping station at the railroad, where 
at the height of the season a million and a half pounds of milk are 
received per month, and at one time fifty to sixty thousand pounds 
of cheese made. The establishment's product now is candy. Some 
of those who have been proprietors of creameries additional to those 
who were builders are : Finney & Bromley, Wallace Pearson, Wal- 
lace Lyman, Jerome Coonley, Eoy Clayton, the Columbia Creamery 
Company, Marshall W T hite, Fred Turner, Myron Avery, A. H. Fay, 
Judson Santamo, Willard D. Williamson and Karl AYalbridge. Fifteen 
to eighteen years ago the value of the product of these creameries aver- 
aged perhaps twelve to fifteen thousand dollars each per year, which the 
business of the milk shipping station must have lessened a good deal. 

Probably the first store in Burke was that of Joseph Goodspeed near 
the Center, built in 1828, though Ashbel N. Sanford is sometimes cred- 
ited with having preceded him. If Sanford was in fact in trade it was 
before 1815, at a point west of Thayer's Corners. John Mitchell had 



Burke 229 

a store on the Canadian frontier, in the extreme northeastern part of 
the town, but I think not until as late as about 1837. The place, but 
not the building, is the same that Minnie Perkins lately occupied, with 
no enviable reputation. Since Mitchell's time there have been, and are 
now, other " line " stores to the west, the buildings being partly in 
Canada and partly in New York. These have been kept by many 
different parties — Soper & Gurley, J. J. Jameson, Lewis & Andrus, 
Seymour L. Wyman, Leonard and John Bush, Cartwright & Perrigo, 
George Anderson and John Helm and others. The Bush store was 
burned some years ago, but four remain, viz. : J. J. Jameson's, John 
Patterson's, John B. Flynn's and Minnie Perkins's, now closed because 
she is in prison. Some of these were altogether respectable and legiti- 
mate in their business, though always when the profit seemed greater 
than the risk were a cloak for smuggling operations by their customers — 
which, of course, is not necessarily a reflection upon the proprietors. 
Others of these stores, whose stocks consisted largely of " Kentucky 
hardware," were now and again mere drinking resorts, and an offense 
to the community. 

Merchants at Burke Center, besides Mr. Goodspeed, have included 
Ezra Stiles, Ezra Goodspeed, Thomas Williams, Dr. William Golding, 
Finney & Scovel and Lorenzo W. Thayer, whose store building is the 
same that Mr. Goodspeed erected ninety years ago; and at the Hollow, 
where there was little trading until 1848, Joseph Goodspeed, Samuel 
Smith and Elisha Marks as partners, and later Taylor & Mitchell, Marks 
& Derby, Lewis Arthur, Ezra S. Goodspeed, Day & Badger, Soper & 
Adams, Warren Clark, Lyman Brown, Everett Brothers, George B. 
Greene, William Day and Harvey Harrington. George A. Smith and 
George Jones are merchants there at the present time. 

Daniel Mitchell had a store at Thayer's Corners, which the tornado 
of 1856 demolished, and which was rebuilt to be " storm proof." The 
same building is there yet, and is occupied by Daniel Gillett. 

Burke has known at least two days of great excitement — one June 
30, 1856, and the other July 4, 1861. The story of each is unusual and 
stirring. In the afternoon of the date first stated the storm known as 
the Chateaugay tornado, which has never been equaled in the history 
of this section except by the whirlwind that tore through the wilderness 
in the southern part of our county in 1845, developed near the western 
border of the town, but did little damage west of Hawks's Hollow. 
An eyewitness of its origin told afterward how he saw two clouds 



230 History of Franklin County 

forming, one in the northwest and the other in the southwest, and, 
rapidly converging, meet with a resultant wind which swept eastwardly 
to Lake Champlain, but with diminished fury after it had passed 
Chateaugay. It's path was narrow, but within that limit it wrought 
awful havoc. Fences, buildings and forests were leveled. A count made 
two days later showed nearly two hundred buildings between the west 
line of Burke and Chateaugay four corners blown down, unroofed or 
moved from their foundations; and this included only the structures 
that had been practically destroyed. From the Constable line to Burke 
Center the damage was less than from the latter point east, but at the 
Center the store of Keeler & Stewart and the school house were unroofed 
and several dwelling houses wrecked. Thence the wind seems to have 
taken its course at a higher level until it neared Thayer's Corners, where 
it trended lower, and the store of Daniel Mitchell was utterly destroyed 
and its contents scattered. Some of the goods that it had contained were 
found later in the town of Clinton, ten miles or more east. From 
Thayer's Corners on beyond Chateaugay village hardly a building 
escaped. The only person killed was Jeremiah Thomas at Thayer's 
Corners, who was struck by a timber from Daniel Mitchell's store. He 
had only recently sold his farm, and was about to move west. 

The other day in question was when Hiram Cartwright and other 
sympathizers raised a secession flag at the Hollow. The flag had been 
painted by William Hollenbeck. The time was when the Hollow was 
deemed one of the hardest places in the county, and the day was doubt- 
less the wildest that Burke ever knew. It is said that there were two 
hundred men drunk there on that day, and drunk in no ordinary degree, 
but ravingly so. The men who were back of the flag raising armed 
themselves, assembled at the foot of the pole, and declared that they 
would shoot any one who should attempt to haul down the flag. Word 
of the affair reached Malone, and a company of sober men, quite as thor- 
oughly in earnest as the rabble at Burke, was recruited, largely from 
the railroad machine shops, to go to Burke for the purpose of tearing 
down the rag. Time was necessarily consumed in making preparations 
and in waiting for the train, and in the meantime William B. Donihee, 
then a law student, was sent to Burke by Francis D. Flanders to warn 
the crowd of what was impending, and with admonition to lower the 
flag. By furious driving Mr. Donihee arrived in time, and just as the 
train pulled into the station Cartwright and his friends had felled the 
pole, when the flag was removed, and secreted in a drain pipe in Cart- 



Burke 231 

wright's cellar. Any other course would undoubtedly have precipitated 

bloodshed. It is pleasant to be able to note that the emblem was never 
again displayed, 

Burke has a lodge of Odd Fellows (Shiloh No. 750), organized in 
1896, which has a present membership of sixty-eight. Its hall, near the 
railroad station, owned by the order, was burned a lew months ago, but 
has been rebuilt on larger and better lines than the original structure. 

Burke Grange, Xo. 932, was organized in 190?, and has nearly two 
hundred members. Its building, owned by the organization, is located 
near the railroad station. 

Presbyterianism or Congregationalism in Burke was one with that 
of Chateaugay until 1815, when, upon the erection of Burke as a town, 
twenty-six members of the mother church (which had been formed in 
1816) were granted letters of dismission to form a Congregational 
church in the new town. Previous to this separation, and, indeed, for 
a few years following it, the same pastor served both societies — the 
usual place of worship in Burke having been the Morse school house, 
near the Center. In 1850 work was begun upon a house of worship in 
the same vicinity, which was dedicated in 1853. It was tbe first church 
building in the town, and it was improved in 1860, and again in 1872. 
It was struck by lightning and burned June 22, 1901. A year later the 
present edifice, finished in natural woods and with memorial windows — 
a very attractive church home — had been reared in its place. The 
membership of the church is now about one hundred and fifty, of whom 
one-third are non-residents. The form of organization was changed 
from Congregational to Presbyterian in 1875. For a few years the 
old Free Will Baptist Church in Xorth Burke has been in the possession 
of the Presbyterians, and services in it are held regularly by the pastor 
of Burke Center. 

The history of early Methodism in Burke is also interwoven with that 
of Chateaugay — Burke having been within the Chateaugay circuit or 
a mission for more than forty years before it became an independent 
charge, which status was surprisingly late as measured by the establish- 
ment of similar relations in other towns no more important. While 
there is no conclusively sure record bearing upon the point, it is believed 
that Methodist services were held in West Chateaugay (now Burke) in 
1802 by a circuit rider, though probably there was no approach to 
regularity of visitation until about 1831; and it was not until 1869 that 
tbe place had a conference appointment of a resident preacher, who 



232 History of Franklin County 

must have regretted the assignment, for in 1872 he (Eev. Waly P. Hall) 
was charged with scandalous conduct, and subjected to a most annoy- 
ing prosecution. The court, however, fully exonerated him. A church 
building near the railroad was erected in 1870, and was remodeled in 
1903. From 1869 to 1885 the pastor here served the church at Bell- 
mont Center also, and for the past twenty-five years or such a matter 
has officiated at Covey town, which has a separate church organization, 
incorporated in 1890. 

The Baptist church was an offshoot of the society of the same denom- 
ination which was formed in Chateaugay in 1817, though not incor- 
porated until 1848. Between these dates the organization had only a 
languishing existence, and was without a pastor for considerable periods. 
In 1848 the membership in both towns was eighty-eight, two-thirds or 
more of whom were in Burke. These formed a new society, and in 1852 
began the erection of a church edifice at Burke Center. The building 
burned in 1855, and was at once rebuilt of brick, though not finished 
until 1859. The membership showed little loss or gain for several 
years, but in 1864 the society reported that "as a church we are 
spiritually dead," and that it had had no preaching for two years. In 
1867, however, there seemed to be a revival of interest and activity for 
two or three years, following which the number of members decreased, 
and twenty years later they numbered hardly more than a score. The 
membership when the society was strongest having been located largely 
in the eastern part of the town, the church building at the Center was 
sold in 1874 to the Roman Catholics, following which services were 
held for a time in Temperance Hall at Thayer's Corners. In 1877 the 
stone building erected by Daniel Mitchell, after the tornado, for a 
store was purchased, and converted into a church, finished and dedi- 
cated in 1879. The society having gone out of existence about 1901, 
the building has become a store again. 

A Free Will Baptist Church was organized in 1870 in the northern 
part of the town, within a half a mile of the Canadian line, and Elder 
Richard Parks of Dickinson was its first pastor. Rev. Marshall White, 
since removed to Virginia, also served it for a number of years. Serv- 
ices were held at first in the school house, but a church building was 
soon erected. The society grew to a membership of about forty, but 
became inactive nearly thirty years ago, and finally died altogether. Tts 
church building is now in possession of the Presbyterians, and services 
are held in it regularly by the pastor at Burke Center. 



Burke 233 

The Wesleyan Methodists have had two church organiations in 
Burke — one joined with the Bangor and Burke circuit (which included 
also districts in Fort Covington, Moira and Westville), and the other 
the Xorth Burke and Chateaugay Wesleyan Methodist Church. The 
former worshiped at first in the school house near Coveytown, but now 
have a little chapel of their own in the same vicinity, where Carlos Hill, 
a local preacher, has officiated ever since it was erected. The other 
Wesleyan church was about midway between Thayer's Corners and the 
Canadian frontier. It was built in 1875, and w r as blown down in 1888, 
when the organization was practically abandoned — its members 
affiliating with a society of the same denomination at Powers Court, Que. 

St. George's Church (Roman Catholic) was formed in the early part 
of 1874 through the activities of Rev. Father De Pauw, then of Chateau- 
gay. The church at the Center, theretofore occupied by the Baptists, 
was purchased at a cost of eight hundred dollars, and was remodeled in 
1898. From 1887 to 1918 Burke was combined with Constable as a 
mission, the rector residing at the latter place, but is now an independent 
charge. The church building at the Center was abandoned and demol- 
ished in 1906, and a fine new edifice erected at Burke proper, which was 
dedicated in 1907. There are one hundred and five families in the 
parish. 



CHAPTER XI 
CHATEAUGAY 

Chateaugay was erected as a town in Clinton county from Pitts- 
burgh and Champlain March 15, 1799, and at first included only four 
townships of the old Military Tract. The name was spelled " Chat- 
euaga " in the act of incorporation. In 1801 the boundaries were 
extended by act of the Legislature to include all of the territory now 
comprising Constable, Fort Covington and Bombay and the northern 
parts of Malone, Bangor and Moira. In 1802 another change was made, 
by which the town came to include all of what now comprises Franklin 
county with the exception of the small tract annexed from St. Law- 
rence in 1913, and including also the town of St. Armand in Essex 
county. In 1805 the erection of Harison (now Malone) left Chateau- 
gay to include only what is now itself, two townships in Clinton county, 
and Burke, Bellmont, Franklin and St. Armand. In 1808 the townships 
in Clinton county were detached; in 1822 St. Armand was set pff from 
Franklin county and annexed to Essex ; and by the erection of Bellmont, 
Burke and Franklin, Chateaugay has been reduced to barely more than 
half a township, so that in area it is one of the smallest towns in the 
county. 

The etymology of the name used to be stated in all soberness as 
" chateau " and " gay," said to signify " gay castle." There would seem 
at first thought to be the same sense, or lack of sense, in this as in the 
jocular derivation of the word horseradish from the Latin " mare " and 
" radix," since in each there is a combination of an English word with 
a foreign. But if we assume the Canadian statutory spelling of the 
word, viz., Chateaugai, as that which obtained in France, the alleged 
signification may be justified. Even then, however, it were far better 
to make the translation " hospitable house " or " cbeerful house " than 
"gay castle." Concerning the local origin of the name the truth was 
brought out a few years ago by Miss Annie Jack, of Chateaugay Basin, 
Que., in a letter to the Franklin County Historical Society. More than 
a century and a quarter before any white person is known to have set 
foot in our town of Chateaugay Charles LeMoyne, the founder of the 
most eminent family in Canada, received a royal grant of land fronting 

12341 



Chatkac(/.a\ '2:\7) 

two leagues on the St. Lawrence and extending back three Leagues from 
the river, and he named this seignory Chateaugay from a place in 
France. Lying at the mouth of the river which now hears the same 
name, the name apparently attached to the stream, and, following it 
southward, came to he applied to the town when it was settled, and then 
to the lakes also. As to the proper spelling of the name, Miss Jack 
notes that DeSalaherry, who was said to be an excellent French scholar, 
wrote it " Chateaugua," while in the statutes of Canada it appears as 
■■ Chateaugai/' The popular spelling in Canada would seem now to 
be " Chateauguay," ' though Miss Jack says that until half a century 
ago it was as we write it here. Formerly the town was sometimes called 
Seventh Town, because it was township number seven of the Old 
Military Tract. 

As the geographies used to phrase it, the surface of Chateaugay is 
diversified. There are hills, ravines and streams, with broad reaches of 
almost level lands. The Chateaugay river enters the town at a point 
midway between its southeastern and soutrnvestern corners, and, trend- 
ing westwardly, traverses almost the entire length of the town, afford- 
ing many good water powers along its course. For a good part of the way 
it flows between walls of rock, rent apart by some convulsion of nature 
or cut through by the ceaseless wear of water, towering in some places 
two hundred feet above the river's bed. A couple of miles above the 
village the waters fall almost perpendicularly over a cliff something like 
fifty feet in height, and a couple of miles below the village, until dammed 
for a power development, it flowed through a chasm almost rivaling that 
at Ausable in depth and grandeur. At one time thirty-odd years ago 
walks and stairways were built there, and a summer hotel erected, which 
attracted many visitors and had many guests until the death of E. A. 
Jackson, who had been the life of the enterprise, left it without a man- 
ager, and it also died as a resort. Other streams are : The Marble 
river, flowing northwestwardly through the town to a junction with the 
Chateaugay, a couple of miles south of the Canadian border; the Board- 
man brook, having a large spring in the town as its source, and empty- 
ing into the Marble river; the Alder brook, the Bailey brook, the Collins 
brook and other smaller brooks in various districts. 

There is an intermittent spring a short distance east of the village, 
just north of the railroad. When in flow the discharge is considerable, 
but, regardless either of the time of year or of the conditions of drouth 
or flood, it has gone dry at intervals from time immemorial, stopping 



236 History of Franklin County 

abruptly and completely. Then, perhaps after a few months or perhaps 
after a year or two, it resumes its flow, usually requiring some days to 
regain its natural volume. 

The Rutland Railroad traverses the central part of the town from 
east to west. The construction of the line at this point presented a 
difficult and expensive problem — a fill having to be made at the 
Chateauga}' river which required the handling of half a million cubic 
yards of earth and the building of a tunnel three hundred feet long and 
twenty-five feet wide to carry the river. This tunnel extends through 
solid rock, and has an arched roof of masonry. The two pieces of work 
consumed five months in time and a hundred and thirty thousand 
dollars in money. 

One of the first roads into Franklin county was the old military turn- 
pike from Plattsburgh, which became the stage route to Ogdensburg, 
and which has now been transformed into a State highway. At first it 
led northerly from a point in the present village to Brayton Hollow, 
and later from near the old Roberts tavern stand (now in the town of 
Clinton) past the Bennett place and across the river at High Falls, 
and so on to a junction with the present road about two miles west of 
the village. It was some years later that the bridge was built at 
Douglass Hollow, and still later that the old covered bridge was erected. 
Besides the main State highway, another is booked for building from 
the village north to the international boundary, where it is to connect 
with the Canadian system of improved roads, and a county highway runs 
from the village south to Chateaugay lake. 

Though Chateaugay has but little deep, rich soil, its average fer- 
tility is high, and the town is one of the very best agriculturally in the 
county. It is our largest and best potato market, the potato crop alone 
bringing the farmers a hundred thousand dollars in a good year, and 
it ranks well in dairying and cattle shipping also. Because of these and 
other conditions, including dairy returns, Chateaugay is, I think, as 
well circumstanced a town as we have : and, if the county clerk's records 
were examined analytically, I believe that they would show as few 
judgments and mortgages proportioned to the population as any town 
in the county. 

Chateaugay is not only our oldest town as regards date of erection, 
but in actual settlement as well. Township number seven of the Old 
Military Tract was surveyed in part in 1795, and Benjamin Roberts, 
from Vermont, and Nathan Beman, of Plattsburgh, having been favor- 



Chateaugay 237 

ably impressed by the country while assisting in the survey, determined 
to locate the next year. A mere path had been cut through the woods 
from Beekmantown, and following this Mr. Roberts returned with one 
employee in February, 1796, to make sugar preparatory to bringing in 
his family later. While on the survey he had erected a rude hut, at a 
point between the present village and Marble river, to house the family 
upon its arrival. Eeturning to Plattsburgh in April, he started with 
his wife and children and Levi Trumbull, Joshua and Kincaid Cham- 
berlain, Ethan Roberts and Jared Munson, as employees for his new 
wilderness home. A yoke of oxen drawing a sled and a pair of steers 
were to serve them for transportation, but one of the oxen gave out at 
Beekmantown, and as much as possible of the party's outfit was then 
loaded upon the odd ox and the steers, while each of the men " backed " 
what he could, and, the father toting a child and the mother carrying 
a babe in her arms, the journey was resumed on foot. The distance 
remaining to be covered was twenty odd miles, and five and a half days 
were spent in making it. At the destination only an unroofed hut 
offered a shelter and a home. All of the furniture, even to the forks and 
plates, had to be wrought out of wood by hand, and food itself, 
which was principally pork and flour, could be had only from Platts- 
burgh except for the game that could be taken from the streams and 
forest. There was neither money nor means of transportation for bring- 
ing large supplies from Plattsburgh at any one time, and thus the one 
remaining ox was kept on the road almost constantly through the sum- 
mer, an entire week being necessary for a round trip. Nathan Beman 
came on and returned to Plattsburgh a number of times during the 
summer, but did not bring his family until autumn. Mr. Roberts 
moved in 1806 or before over into what is now the town of Clinton, 
where he kept a tavern for a number of years. Mr. Beman had as a 
youth guided Ethan Allen in 1775 into Fort Ticonderoga ; and in a 
letter to the Palladium in 1835 he confirmed the popular version of the 
phrasing (sometimes discredited) of Allen's demand of surrender — 
"In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." 
Mr. Beman was sold out under foreclosure in 1811, and died in 
Chateaugay in 1850. 

Within the three or four years following 1796 Lewis Ransom, Jacob 
Smith, Silas Pomeroy, Peleg Douglas, Thomas Smith, Jonathan and 
Ralph Shepard, Jabez Willey, Obed Rust, Justin Pay, Amasa and 
Sebius Fairman, David Mallory, Aaron Beman, Elisha Howard, Gates 



238 History of Franklin County 

Hoit, Samuel Stoughton, William Bailey and others arrived, so that in 
1799 the population had become large enough, considering the distance 
to the seat of town government in Champlain, to warrant the erection 
of the locality into a separate town. In 1800 the inhabitants numbered 
413, with an increase in 1810 to 625 notwithstanding Malone, Con- 
stable and Dickinson, with an aggregate population of 2,094, had been 
detached either directly or indirectly between the two periods. The 
fluctuations in the town's population have been remarkable — losses in 
five years having run as bigh as thirty-five per cent., and gains in an 
equal length of time having been ninety-one and once even one hundred 
and three per cent. The greatest percentage of loss was between 1810 
and 1814, arid is explicable only by removals on account of the war. 
In 1820 the fugitives must have returned with reinforcements, as there 
was a gain for this period from 407 to 828 inhabitants. The population 
at some other periods has been: 2,016 in 1830; 2,824 in 1840; 1,952 
in 1845, when Burke with 1,285 inhabitants had been set off; 3,728 in 
1850, when men at work on the then new railroad must have been 
counted; 3,183 in 1860, followed by a loss of 310 during the civil war. 
In 1865 and in 1910 the population stood at exactly the same figure, 
viz., 2,840, though it had fluctuated between times a hundred or two 
either way. By the enumeration of 1915 the population Was 2,903, 
of whom 112 were aliens. 

The earliest settlements had been almost altogether along what was 
afterward the stage route, extending through the central part of the 
town from its eastern border through Burke (then AVest Chateaugay) 
to what is now the Malone line. 

The town records for 1810 show a hundred and fifty dollars of the 
poor moneys was appropriated for the purchase of a merino ram for the 
use of the town, but if anything else of notable interest outside of the 
licensing of taverns and of individual effort occurred from the date of 
the town's first settlement clown to the time of the war of 1812 I have 
been unable to learn the fact. Its citizenry in this period was of the 
same type that we have met in the sketches of other towns, and possibly 
averaging a bit better in native fore* 1 and shrewdness. Nearly all were 
Vermonters, to whom a considerable body of French Canadians were 
added at about the time of the Papineau rebellion, in 1837 to 1840, 
while after the completion of the railroad in 1850 large numbers of Irish 
who bad been employed on the work took up lands and made their 
homes here. If the quality of citizenship which had obtained at the 



Chateaugay 239 

original settlement deteriorated, the less said about it the better, except 
that the deterioration which I have in mind was not due either to the 
French or the Irish admixture. The early Irish in particular were 
undoubtedly rough, and dearly loved their dram and a " shindy," so 
that it was an unusual holiday when a dozen to a score of fights did not 
occur. But education and the sobriety that the church and property 
ownership induce have changed all this, and the Irish clement has 
become really one of the best in the place. Xot only residents of 
Chateaugay, but people in other places where the records of some of 
Chateaugay's former residents are known, will readily understand the 
loss in character to which I refer, and will comprehend without explana- 
tion why particular mention of a number of men of prominence can not 
well be made. 

In not a few cases whole families have become extinct locally, either 
by death or removal. Obed Eust was the grandfather of Dr. Elisha 
A. Eust of Moira, and the greatgrandfather of Dr. Aloney Eust of 
Malone, while others of his descendants are still living in Chateaugay 
and Burke. Thomas Smith was the son of Jacob, who had been a 
revolutionary soldier, as he himself served in the war of 1812, with 
the rank of colonel. He was the father of Henry B., Eli B. and Elisha 
B., all of whom became men of affairs, and were leaders in pretty much 
everything in the town for a good many years. Gates Hoit was a sol- 
dier in the war of 1812, county clerk in 1809 to 1811 and again in 1813 
to 1815, represented Clinton and Franklin counties in the Assembly in 
1810, 1811, 1812 and 1818, was the right arm of Governor Tompkins 
here during the w r ar of 1812, and was among the foremost in preparing 
Franklin county for defense in that conflict. He was also in the con- 
fidential service of the federal government, or, in other words, a spy; 
and because of such service he claimed to have suffered financially in 
expenses and losses to the amount of $1,397, for which he petitioned 
Congress to reimburse him. Twenty years later that body did vote him 
three hundred dollars, but though he persisted in demanding more it was 
never granted — the charge having been preferred against him that he 
had been engaged during the war, in connection with Augustus Douglas 
and Samuel Percy, in smuggling cattle across the border to the enemy. 
Mr. Hoit's answer was that this action had been employed merely as a 
cover for his operations as a spy, enabling him to get into Canada and 
ascertain conditions there without incurring suspicion. One lot of cattle 
that he had started for Canada was seized south of the border by United 



240 History of Franklin County 

States customs officials, but before they could be driven to safety were 
wrested from the officers by a British raid. It is told as an incident of 
this affair that an American soldier leveled his musket at Mr. Douglas 
and would have taken his life had not John Day struck the gun aside 
at the instant of its discharge, thus sending the bullet wild. Mr. Hoit 
acted for a long time as the selling and collecting agent for owners of 
Chateaugay lands who lived in Albany, Xew York and elsewhere. He 
was the grandfather of Mrs. G. G. Gurley of Malone. William Bailey, 
also a conspicuous personage, an extensive land owner, and engaged in 
many activities, came from Dutchess county in 1796 or 1797. The 
house in which he lived was on Depot street and still stands. He was 
the father of Admiral Theodoras Bailey, the hero of the taking of 
New Orleans in 1863, who was born in Chateaugay in 1805. Mr. Bailey 
was elected by Clinton and Essex counties to the Assembly in 1801 and 
by Clinton alone in 1805, was first judge of the court of common pleas 
in 1806, and was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress the same year. 
About 1803 or 1804 he opened the Bellows ore mine in Bellmont, and 
built a forge near the High Falls in Chateaugay. He is said to have 
built a paper mill also at about the same time near the same point, but 
accounts are at variance as to whether this mill was ever operated, and 
possibly it never existed. He built, too, a saw mill and the Douglass 
grist mill in 1806 or earlier. He removed to Plattsburgh in 1811, and 
died there in 1840. While in Chateaugay he owned one or two slaves. 
Justin Day located near what is now the Burke line, and had four sons, 
to each of whom he gave a farm. John, one of the sons, was the father 
of Henry S., recently deceased at ninety years of age, and the last sur- 
vivor of the family. Aaron Beman became sheriff in 1833, and after 
the expiration of his term marie his home in Malone. Isaac Sebring, 
though never an actual resident, his home and business having been in 
New York city, one of whose districts sent him to the Assembly in 1809, 
1810 and 1811, was intimately associated with the affairs of the town, 
and passed a good deal of time there. He and Theodoras Van Wyek, 
also of New York, were joint owners of several thousand acres of land 
in the town as early as 1806, and still earlier made many mortgage 
loans to settlers who were in need. Mr. Sebring evinced a zealous 
interest in the organization of the Congregational church, and besides 
giving liberally himself to erect a church building secured considerable 
subscriptions for it from his city friends. He was the grandfather of 
Dr. John S. Van Vechten and Mrs. Nellie Munger. 



Chateaugay 241 

It is impracticable of course to follow the history of all of the pio- 
neers and their families, but mention must be made of a few of the 
second generation who became especially prominent. Chief of these 
was Henry B. Smith, the son of Thomas, who began business life as a 
merchant, branched out into lumbering and real estate investment, 
became first judge of the court of common pleas in 1843, and was State 
Senator in 1852 and 1853, deputy collector of customs at Chateaugay 
for a long period, and collector of the district of Champlain from about 
1853 to 1861. He was a keen, farsighted business man, a capable and 
controlling politician, and remarkably successful in all of his under- 
takings. His fortune at the time of his death was probably the largest 
that any one in the county had accumulated up to that time. Gideon 
Collins, who came in 1803, was first judge of the court of common pleas, 
and his son, George C, a man of the highest character and of excellent 
abilities, was school commissioner from 1869 to 1871. The latter was 
the father of William L. of Chateaugay and of Grant G. of Malone. 
Though of a still later generation, Daniel F. Soper and George G. 
Gurley left their impress upon the place, and afterward became promi- 
nent in Malone. The former was elected sheriff in 1860, and the latter 
in 1863. Others of worth and prominence include Daniel S. Coonley, 
Dr. Hial S. Farnsworth, Major John A. Sabin, John Hughes, James 
Mitchell, Dr. William Mott, John McCoy, Levi N. Stevens (whose 
son, Henry, has become one of the leading attorneys of Los Angeles, 
Cal. ). and of course others too numerous to mention, though it must not 
be omitted to name Dr. A. M. Phelps, who, though located here for only 
a short time, was yet an appreciable factor in the town, and afterward, 
as a practitioner in Xew York city, became one of the most brilliant and 
skilful surgeons in the State. 

The Roberts, Douglas, Douglass (there were two distinct lines). 
Smith and Beman families were prolific, and some of them addicted to 
the perpetuation of favorite Christian names to the degree that there 
were John first, second, third and fourth, and Samuel first, second and 
third. There was a good deal of intermarrying, and relationships 
became close and then involved. The survivors to-day are pathetically 
few. 

Chateaugay was an important point on the northern frontier in the 
war of 1812. At the very beginning of the conflict a detachment of 
regulars under Colonel John F. Wool (afterward a general in the war 
with Mexico and in the civil war) and Colonel Snelling was stationed 



242 History of Franklin County 

in the northern part of the town for a short time. In the winter of 1813 
a smaller body of troops under Captain Braddum York was there, and 
at this time a petition, signed by Gates Hoit and others, and approved 
by Captain York, was presented to the Governor, praying for the com- 
pletion of a block house, alread} r partly built, and with timber and 
other material for it assembled on the ground. The Governor subse- 
quently sent Mr. Hoit one hundred dollars for the project, which had 
been consummated by the people themselves before the receipt of the 
money. This block house was situate on the west side of the road, about 
three-quarters of a mile north of the Four Corners, and not far from 
Marble river. Captain David Erwin's company was stationed at it for 
a time. Afterward another block house, called Fort Hickory, was 
built in the northeastern part of the town, and in it Samuel Hollenbeck 
alone stood off a party of Canadians who attempted its capture. In the 
late summer of 1813 General Hampton arrived with an army of several 
thousand men, who camped on the ground now bounded by the railroad 
on the south and by Depot street on the east ; at a point on the Johnston 
farm, about forty rods north of the Catholic church ; and in the vicinities 
of the two block houses. During this period there was a skirmish with 
British invaders or raiders on the Coonley farm, now almost in the 
heart of the village, in which the enemy was driven off. Six Americans 
are said to have been killed, while the British loss is unknown. Local 
tradition attributes the attack to a purpose to draw the Americans into 
an ambush in Canada. It was from Chateaugay that General Hampton 
invaded Canada, only to be humiliatingly defeated by a greatly inferior 
force, and shamefully driven back to his encampments. After his crim- 
inal withdrawal of his army from Chateaugay to Plattsburgh in the 
autumn of 1813, in practical desertion of General Wilkinson, with whom 
it had been planned that he should operate against Montreal, other 
smaller bodies of troops occupied Chateaugay from time to time (a 
detachment from General Wilkinson's army under Colonel Bissell com- 
prising one of them) until evacuation in February, 1814, when the Brit- 
ish poured in for a day or two — proceeding east as far as Marble river, 
and seizing a good deal of private property as well as military stores 
that had been abandoned by the Americans. Not a little of the private 
belongings so taken was rum. Sickness had prevailed to an alarming- 
degree in General Hampton's army, and something like fifty soldiers 
were buried near the lot on which Thomas Eaton now lives on Depot 
street, and perhaps an equal or a larger number on the Johnston farm. 
The gruesome work of burial was performed by John Day. The block 



Chateaugav 243 

house near Marble river was burned at about the close of the war, 
supposedly set on fire by a Canadian. 

The next diversion after the war was scheming for bounties on 
noxious animals. In 1817 the town voted bounties additional to those 
offered by the State and county for wolves, "painters," hears, foxes 
and even crows, blackbirds and squirrels. The amount voted for a 
wolf was fifteen dollars, for a panther thirty dollars, for a fox four 
dollars, and for a crow one dollar. The amount to be paid by the town 
for a wolf was later increased to twenty dollars, making with the State 
and county bounty sixty dollars for each wolf killed. But the hunters 
were not satisfied to receive simply what they might honestly claim 
under the system, and, operating with collusive officials, would collect 
a number of bounties on a single pate, or even palm off dogs' heads 
for those of wolves. To reconcile resident taxpayers to these fraudulent 
practices, the hunters paid the taxes of these, and thus the State at 
large and non-resident land owners were the only ones who suffered in 
money, though it must be assumed that others must have lost in self- 
respect. The story of these frauds is told more fully in another chapter. 

Chateaugay has not been without its calamities and tragedies. On 
July 4, 1841, while firing a national salute on Depot street, the man 
whose part was to thumb the vent of the cannon became careless, with 
the result that when the next charge was rammed home fire caught it 
prematurely, and Cornelius Hngaboom (father of Samuel G. of Malone) 
was so horribly burned that he died, and a man named Mason had his 
arm torn off — the injury proving fatal. The ramrod that was torn out 
of the hands of these two struck a girl at the hotel on the corner below, 
and injured her severely. The girl was one of a group of twenty-six 
assembled on the hotel balcony to represent the different States. 

At Brayton Hollow about 1850 two young men and three young 
ladies — James Ayers, Garret Percy, Maria Crippen, Eunice Dailey and 
Sophronia Percy — were enjoying a boat ride on a mill pond, when the 
boat struck a submerged limb and overturned. All were drowned. 
Hundreds gathered to join in the search for" the bodies, two of which 
were recovered where the water was less than four feet deep. Mrs. 
Matilda Foster, the fortune teller of Burke, was called to direct the 
search, and is said to have pointed out the place where some of the 
bodies would he found. The event occasioned widespread horror and 
sorrow, and the funeral services for all of the victims, held in a grove in 
the vicinity, were attended by practically every person in town. 

In October, 1851, Willie, son of John Kane, aged four years, wandered 



244 History of Franklin County 

from his home in the southern part of the town. The father and neigh- 
bors searched vainly for him through the night and the two succeeding 
days, when some wretch, callous to the father's grief and anxiety, gave 
a further tragic phase to the case by insinuating that, the ground having 
been covered foot by foot for a considerable distance without finding 
the child, the father must have killed him in a paroxysm of rage, and 
secreted the body. Philander Deming told the story graphically in one 
of his Adirondack tales some twenty years later — how Mr. Kane 
instantly called a meeting at the school house, and with amazing calm- 
ness and yet righteously indignant confronted those assembled, deny- 
ing with dignity the aspersion, and characterizing it as a lie. The 
search was resumed after a few days, when " Logan" (Elijah Heading of 
Bellmont), while on his way to join the searchers, stumbled upon the 
body on the bank of Little Trout river, three miles from Mr. Kane's 
home. The child was the brother of Mrs. John E. Bush and of Harvey 
Kane of Malone. 

In 1856 a tornado swept through the central part of Chateaugay. An 
account published at the time stated that in the village there was " com- 
plete desolation ; not a building escaped injury, and many were com- 
pletely destroyed," while farther east in the town sixty to seventy struc- 
tures were destroyed or seriously damaged, and to the west like devasta- 
tion was wrought. In the village alone one hundred and twenty-eight 
dwelling houses, four stores and the Catholic church were wrecked, and 
the Methodist and Presbyterian churches and three school houses were 
injured. Many were made destitute, and relief was provided by con- 
tributions from Malone and other places. In August, 1885, a wind 
and hail storm broke large quantities of window glass and severely 
damaged the crops of more than sixty farmers and many gardens. The 
estimated loss was thirty thousand dollars. 

In 1858, when a new Baptist church was in course of erection, the 
roof timbers fell, and injured a dozen workers — some of them very 
severely. 

During the 1868 campaign the Grant and Colfax Tanners' Club of 
Malone attended a political rally at Chateaugay, wearing their uniforms 
and carrying banners and torches. Party spirit ran high everywhere, 
and in few places was partisanship more virulent than in Chateaugay. 
After parading through the principal streets of the village the procession 
was entering the hall where the speaking was to occur when a gang of 
toughs directed a shower of brickbats and stones upon the members. A 
number of persons were badly cut and bruised, one of whom (Millard 
Greeno of Malone) so severely that he never recovered. 



Chateaug.m H45 

A fire in the business section of the village in 1867 wiped out prop- 
erty of the estimated value of twenty-five thousand dollars. In 1891 
the Douglas tannery, employing a hundred and fifty men, was burned, 
with a claimed loss to the owners of sixty-five thousand dollars and the 
loss to the village of an industry whose pay-roll was five hundred dollars 
per day, and that had contributed largely to its prosperity. In Jan- 
uary, 1893, with the wind blowing a gale and the temperature at twenty- 
five degrees below zero, a fire swept eastward from River street, destroy- 
ing the entire business quarter on the north side of Main street, with 
first figures of loss placed at a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 
though this was probably an overestimate. Yet a fourth fire in 1915, 
west from River street, involved a loss of about twenty-five thousand 
dollars. 

The village of Chateaugay was incorporated in 18G8. Its present 
(1915) population is 1,196, which is a gain of 151 since 1910. The 
place has about everything needed to make it attractive and residence 
in it comfortable. It has a strong bank quartered in a fine building, one 
of the best school houses and the very best town house in the county, 
good church buildings, a gravity system of water works, established in 
1880 by a private corporation with a capital of ten thousand dollars, 
which takes its supply from springs that are the source of Boardman 
brook, and which affords a good pressure for fire purposes. The village 
is electrically lighted, its main street is brick paved, and since 1895 it 
has had a public sewer system. Its store buildings are principally two 
and three story brick structures of a substantial character, and the 
mercantile establishments are enterprising and well stocked. The town 
house is the outgrowth of a benefaction of William Johnston, Jr., who 
bequeathed six thousand dollars to build it. But the town determined 
that if it were to have anything of the kind it would have nothing less 
than a structure that should be adequate and entirely satisfactory. It 
therefore voted three separate appropriations, aggregating thirty-four 
thousand dollars, to add to the bequest, and proceeded in 1910 to 
erect an edifice in which the two polling places are accommodated, and 
containing an office for the town clerk and a large assembly hall for 
town meetings, with rooms to rent for a post-office and other business 
uses, and a cosy and neat theatre, with a seating capacity of more than 
six hundred, for entertainments. 

In a historical sermon in 187(5 the pastor of the Presbyterian church 
stated that the first religious service in Chateaugay was held in L801 
or 1802 by a Presbyterian clergyman named Huntington, and that the 



246 History of Franklin County 

organization of the Congregational church, in 1816, was effected by 
Rev. Ashbel Parmelee of Malone and Rev. James Jordan of Potsdam. 
All local records of the society of date earlier than 1830 having dis- 
appeared, only fragmentary particulars are obtainable concerning the 
movement during the fifteen years following its inception. The three 
clergymen named are understood each to have visited the place occas- 
ionally during this interval as missionary preachers, and the minutes 
of the Presbytery of Champlain show that Eev. Jacob Hart was 
ordained there in 1822. Mr. Hart is known to have been pastor for 
several years subsequently, and since his time the church has had resi- 
dent pastors continuously except as a vacancy may have existed now 
and then for a few weeks or possibly a few months. Prior to 1822 the 
school house had been used in common with the Baptists for a place of 
worship, but the latter claimed right of occupancy for three-quarters 
of the time, which meant contention between the denominations or that 
other accommodations must be had. The difficulty was surmounted 
through the generosity of Isaac Sebring, who provided a meeting place 
for a time at his own expense. Then, in 1825, steps were taken looking 
to the erection of a church edifice, Mr. Sebring securing subscriptions 
to the amount of $228 and two hundred and forty-five acres of land 
from his city friends, and himself giving the sum of $469.42,. The 
frame was raised in 1828, Mr. Sebring taking pains in his report of the 
affair to state that the work proceeded " in great harmony, without acci- 
dent, dispute or intoxication.'' The building was not completed until 
1842. In the same year the form of organization was changed from 
Congregational to Presbyterian. The society had included Burke until 
1845, when twenty-five of its members were given letters of dismission 
to form a church of their own in the then new town. The church build- 
ing was wrenched and unroofed by the tornado of 1856, and was 
repaired and inclosed with brick at a cost of three thousand dollars. 
Further improvements were made in 1866, and ten years later new fur- 
nishings and a new organ were procured. The old edifice having come 
to be regarded as not commensurate with the wealth and necessities of 
the society, it was razed in 1902, and the present building erected on 
the same site at a cost of nearly ten thousand dollars. The society is 
clear of debt, and has a membership of about one hundred and twenty. 
Methodism had a beginning in Chateaugay at about the same time 
with Congregationalism, as Rev. Henry Ryan, a circuit rider, visited the 
town in 1802, and three years afterward a class of six members was 
formed, with Benjamin Emmons as leader. It is supposed that from 



Chateaugay 247 

1805 Methodist services were held more or less irregularly, but by 
whom until 1831 I have no knowledge except that Rev. James Erwin 
says that " Barzillia Willey, James Covel, Jonathan ]N T ewman, William 
Chase, Isaac Puffer and others carried the gospel through the valleys of 
St. Lawrence and Franklin counties from the year 1800." The first 
regular appointment by conference to Chateaugay was that of Eev. 
Lyndon King in 1831. Mr. King had been a Bangor man, a brother 
of John, Rev. Rufus and Harry King, and was the father of the late 
Alden King, of Malone, and of former Congressman William King, 
deceased, of Minnesota, and an uncle of William A. King and a great 
uncle of Floyd P. King, of Malone. At the time of his Chateaugay 
appointment he had just been ordained, having previously been a local 
preacher. He is said to have been a good sermonizer, and especially 
strong in exhortation; but after a time he became discontented, and 
went over to the Wesleyan Methodist denomination; then denounced all 
church organization; became a spiritualist; and by his own arrange- 
ment his funeral sermon was preached by a Universalist. In 1835 Mr. 
Erwin was sent to Chateaugay in charge, with Harris Kingsley, a local 
preacher, and John E. Stoddard as co-workers. According to Mr. 
Erwin, the latter had been in the district at that time for several years, 
which suggests that Chateaugay must have had Methodist ministration 
for some time preceding the location there of Mr. King. Chateaugay 
circuit at this period had a circumference of four hundred miles — 
extending south into Bellmont, west to the Malone line, north over to 
Covey Hill and down to Lachine in Canada; it included Ellensburgh 
also. It required six weeks for a rider to cover the territory, and 
thus, with three men working, each appointment averaged to be given 
a service once in two weeks. Mr. Erwin portrays then conditions 
vividly. A circuit rider's outfit included a horse, saddle, saddle-bags, 
and a book or two; and his dress was a white or drab fur hat, a cape 
and clothes made as plain as possible, forming a sort of uniform, so that 
"you could tell a Methodist preacher anywhere by his dress." His pay 
was a hundred dollars a year if he were single, with a hundred dollars 
additional if married, together with an allowance of sixteen dollars for 
each child under seven years of age, and of twenty-four dollars for each 
child between the ages of seven and fourteen years, and also of from 
twenty-five to fifty dollars for "table and feed." For his own first 
year in the ministry as a circuit rider Mr. Erwin received only fifty 
dollars, and even divided that amount with his associate rider, who was 
a man of family. A rider customarily traveled from fifteen to thirty 
miles on a Sunday, always on horseback, and spent from six to eight 



248 History of Franklin County 

hours in meetings. At the first service which Mr. Erwin held in 
Chateaugay, in a stone school house in the northern part of the town, 
people came from points fifty miles distant, and residents in the 
locality entertained them all — some single households caring for as 
many as twenty or thirty each, and even on this scale a part of the 
visitors had to be lodged three miles away and others in barns, so scant 
was the population. The occasion was a quarterly meeting ; and for 
lovefeast on Sunday morning, the school house proving insufficient to 
hold the crowd, the barn of Amaziah. Smith was used. The temperature 
was below zero, a carpenters bench served for a pulpit, and seats were 
arranged in the stable, on the barn floor and in the haymow and even 
on the hayloft. Eev. Silas Comfort, the presiding elder, was present, 
accompanied by another nonresident preacher. Judge of the character 
of the country at this time from Mr. Erwin's statement that on his 
journeys in Canada he had to sleep in a straw bunk or in a trundlebed 
with the children, shivering from cold ; fowls roosting overhead, and 
pigs and calves at his feet ; and breakfasting with benumbed hands and 
wearing his overcoat and muffler. Mr. Erwin says, further, that in 
Canada wolves then traveled in large packs, while panthers and bears 
abounded, so that when moving to an appointment at night he had to be 
accompanied by a guard, carrying firebrands and rifles. Even under 
such conditions it was customary to proceed shouting hymns, and to 
stop now and then to hold a prayer meeting in the snow. The first 
church building erected by the Methodists in Chateaugay was not pro- 
vided until 1854. The tornado two years later damaged it badly, but 
it was soon repaired, and answered the needs of the society until 1880, 
when it was demolished, and the present commodious and substantial 
brick building erected on the same site at a cost of about twelve thou- 
sand dollars. The church is free from debt, and has two hundred and 
thirty members. A Methodist Episcopal church was built at Earleville 
in 1891. 

A Baptist church was formed under the leadership of Elder Isaac 
Sawyer in 1817, with eleven members, and there were never enough 
accessions to make the organization really strong. The erection of a 
church building was begun in 1820 on Depot street, two or three doors 
south of the Chateau, and it was eighteen years later when it was 
finished. The parish had originally included West Chateaugay, where, 
when Burke was erected in 1844, two-thirds of the members resided, 
and organized a new church — leaving the mother body weaker than 
ever. Nevertheless the Depot street church was deemed unsatisfactory 



Chateaugay 249 

and insufficient, and in 1858 construction of a new one was begun on 
Franklin street — services being held while the work was in progress 
in the Presbyterian church. The society, becoming gradually more and 
more feeble, finally went out of existence, and about 1899 its church 
building on Franklin street was demolished to make place for dwelling 
houses. 

Though resident Catholics preferred formal request to Bishop 
Hughes as early as 1840 for assignment of a resident missionary priest 
to the place, Chateaugay continued to remain a part of the Hogansburgh 
parish until 18-19, and then of Malone until 1863. In 1844, however, 
Rev. James Keveney of Hogansburgh procured a church building to be 
erected, but so far as is known no priest held service in it, or even 
visited the town except in response to occasional sick calls, until Rev. 
Father McCabe of Malone assumed charge in 1849, and said mass at 
such infrequent times as he could make opportunity. The church build- 
ing was destroyed by the tornado of 1856, and rebuilding was begun 
under the direction of Rev. Father Thaves of Malone. It remained, 
however, for Rev. Father Edmond De Pauw, who in 1863 was trans- 
ferred from the post of assistant at Malone to be pastor of the newly 
formed St. Patrick's church of Chateaugay, to finish the work. The 
charge then embraced Burke, Ellenburgh and Cherubusco, and included 
nearly six hundred Irish and French families. During the first year of 
Father De Pauw's ministration here one hundred and fifty persons were 
confirmed at one time, and during the year 1868 five hundred. As to 
conditions prevalent when Father De Pauw assumed charge and as to 
the results wrought under him I condense from a Catholic writer, the 
Rev. J. Talbot Smith, who apparently felt privileged to say what a 
Protestant might hesitate to write: The people had been practically 
without restraint for forty years, ''and their moral conduct found no 
guide or corrective except those which innumerable whiskey shops and 
unlimited dancing were able to supply. * * * The church itself was 
little better than a barn, with no pews, badly heated, and so unfinished 
that the snow found entrance, and the sacred wine froze in the chalice. 
AVhen the priest made preparations to introduce pews into the church, 
the twelve trustees protested, and, finding their protest vain, resigned. 
A collection w r as announced for the second Sunday to raise funds for 
purchasing wine, breads, altar furniture and other necessaries. Twenty- 
five coppers were collected. * * * A people with little faith and low 
morals, spending their substance on drink, and their virtue and health 
in riotous living and drunkenness, spurred to attend church only by a 



250 History of Franklin County 

kind of feeble self-respect which was more a tradition than a reality ; " 
but Father De Pauw corrected disobedience and rebellion, organized 
temperance societies, and fought whiskey selling and whiskey drinking 
in the confessional and at the polls. His influence everywhere was for 
good, and he won the esteem and affection not only of his own people, 
but of the entire community. In 1885 three thousand confessions were 
made, and " whiskey law," the dances, the youthful immorality and the 
public scandals had disappeared. No equal work has ever been done by 
any priest in Northern New York, so far as I am aware, with the 
exception of that accomplished during a part of the same period by 
Eev. Father LeGrand and Eev. Father Blanchard in Malone. Since the 
completion of St. Patrick's church there have been expended in each of 
three or four years from five hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars 
(something like seven thousand dollars in all) for improvements — 
vestments, a bell, etc. — and also in 1890 the sum of seven thousand 
dollars for a parsonage. There are now about three hundred families 
in the parish, Burke, Ellenburgh and Cherubusco having been set off 
from it since Eev. Father De Pauw assumed charge half a century ago.* 

There have been three distinct attempts to establish and maintain an 
Episcopal church in Chateaugay. The first had its inception in 1833, 
and had a feeble existence until 1839, during which time such services 
as were held were conducted by the rector of St. Mark's in Malbne. In 
1849 Henry B. and Elisha Smith, Oel Sunderlin, Theodore T. S. Beman 
and others organized St. Peter's church, which also had a languishing 
existence for three or four years, and was visited once by Bishop Hunt- 
ington. The services of this organization were held in the Presbyterian 
church. St. John's Church in the Village of Chateaugay was founded 
in 1869, and continued as an organization, though without much activity 
for most of the time, until 1891, when it was declared extinct. Until it 
erected a house of worship of its own, it occupied the Baptist church; 
but services were irregular and infrequent except during one brief 
period when it had a resident missionary. The mortgage on its own 
building was eventually foreclosed, and the structure made over into a 
dwelling house by William L. Collins. It is now the property of the 
W. B. Eyan estate. 

Chateaugay had a Masonic Lodge (Eainbow) as early as 1809, which, 



* St. Patrick's church was struck by lightning on Wednesday evening, July 
12, 1916, and the belfry flashed almost instantly into flame, which crept under 
the roof and soon enveloped the entire structure. Only the foundation walls and 
a mass of debris remained to mark the site. There was an insurance of $7,500 
on the building and contents, most of the latter of which were saved. The loss 
was, of course, much greater. 



C HATE AUG AY 251 

however, went out of existence in anti-Masonic times, something like 
twenty years later. A memorandum among Gates Hoit's papers states 
that when a British force was in Chateaugay in 1814 some of the men 
broke into the hall of Thomas Smith's tavern, which was the old Frank- 
lin House, burned in 1857, and which stood on the site of the present 
Beman Block, and stole a carpet and the lodge jewels. Mr. Hoit and 
Samuel Sanborn followed the British to Cornwall in the hope of regain- 
ing the stolen property, but were denied an interview with the com- 
mandant, and were ordered to leave the place forthwith; but before 
departing notified the officer in writing of the purpose of their visit. 
Though they were given no reply, the commandant must have com- 
municated the facts to Montreal Masons, as the latter afterward wrote 
that the missing articles had been taken into Upper Canada, and were 
not recoverable. However, the Montreal Masons sent in their place 
new jewels which were more valuable than those that had been stolen. 
A successor to Rainbow Lodge was chartered as Frontier Lodge, No. 
517, June 6, 1862. which now has one hundred and thirty-five members. 

Chateaugay Grange, No. 964, was organized in January, 1903, and 
has a present membership of one hundred and ninety. 

Wadhams Council, No. 469, Knights of Columbus, was organized 
January 14, 1900, with fifty-three charter members, who have now 
increased to two hundred and thirty. 

The Bank of Chateaugay was chartered as a State institution October 
16, 1887. George Hawkins of Malone headed the movement to give the 
town banking facilities, and until his death was the bank's president. 
It prospered from the outset, and has been of great benefit to the place. 
Its charter having expired, expediency seemingly counseled liquidation, 
with the formation of a new bank under the national system, which 
began business October 16, 1907, with the late Bruce C. Bort as presi- 
dent. It has a capital of $75,500, surplus and undivided profits in 
September, 1917, aggregating $73,608.36, and deposits amounting to 
$429,435.48. It is the fourth largest bank in the county, and. as the 
figures show, it is strong and thoroughly sound, and its management is 
excellent. 

B. F. Roberts Post No. 576, G. A. R., was organized in August, 1885 
— the name supposedly having been taken in honor of the town's first 
settler, who was, however, B. S. instead of B. F. The name was changed 
to Admiral Bailey Post in 1890. Admiral Bailey was born in Chat- 
eaugay in 1805. The post had a hundred and twenty-five members at 
one time, and now has only fifteen. 



252 History of Franklin County 

An agricultural society for the eastern towns of Franklin county and 
the western of Clinton county was organized in 1871, but no exhibitions 
were held. In October, 1906, the Chateaugay Agricultural Society for 
Bellmont, Chateaugay, Clinton, Ellenburgh and the surrounding coun- 
try was incorporated with a capital of $10,000. Grounds south of the 
railroad station were bought and fitted up with buildings and a race 
track, and annual exhibitions were held for four years, when a too 
ambitious offer of purses for trotting races (one of which was $10,000) 
brought the society to grief and bankruptcy. Its grounds were sold 
under mortgage foreclosure. James A. Farley, the strike breaker and 
owner of a number of fast horses, confident that he himself would win 
the race, guaranteed the purse, but when the horse of another came first 
under the wire he welched, and the society collapsed. 

The first newspaper published in Chateaugay was the Journal, estab- 
lished June 4, 1867, by I. VanBuskirk and A. N 1 . Merchant, with C. H. 
Boy n ton associated with it later. Its life was short, and after three or 
four years it was displaced by the Star, with Mr. Merchant as pub- 
lisher. T. K. Milne eventually bought the Star, and, failing to make a 
success of it, discontinued publication in 1877. The same year A. H. 
Merritt and Chas. H. Huntington of Malone started the Record, inde- 
pendent in politics, and sold in 1884 to Julius D. Beckwith. In 1892 
Ferrell & Neher published the Franklin County Democrat as a cam- 
paign paper, and in the autumn of the same year bought the Record, 
consolidating the two. The Record is still published, with Frank W. 
Ferrell as editor and manager. Hon. Warren T. Thayer, now the 
county's representative in the Assembly, founded a new Chateaugay 
Journal in 1896, and after a few years sold it to A. W. Boberts, who 
continued its publication until his death, when Walter Murray bought 
the property. The office was destroyed by fire in 1906, and thus the 
paper died. 

The Chateaugay Electric Light and Power Company, incorporated 
in 1894, with a capital of $6,000 and with Ernest A. Douglass owning 
nearly all of the stock, installed a plant at the Douglass grist mill, and 
for a few years lighted the streets, residences and business places. In 
1902 the Chasm Power Company (present capitalization $35,000) was 
incorporated, with Charles L. Bentley president, and developed a 
superb power at the chasm. The dam is nearly fifty feet in height and 
the actual head ninety-odd feet, with an estimated potential develop- 
ment of twenty-five hundred horse power. After a few years the new 
company acquired the Douglass plant, which has since been dismantled. 



Chateaugay 253 

The Chasm Power Company's transmission lines extend into some 01 
the farming districts of the town, to Brainard&ville in Bellmont, and 
through Burke into Constable and Malone. Dr. John S. Van Vechten 
is the present president, P. R. Humphrey secretary, and E. S. Duffy 
treasurer. Dr. Van Vechten and Don. Warren T. Thayer hold a 
majority of the stock. 

The first creamery in Chateaugay, and the second in the county, was 
built by Adam M. Bennett south of the village in 1871, and was after- 
ward owned by B. 0. Boulston. It was discontinued about 1909. Two 
or three others were built in 1872, and from that date onward ten or a 
dozen more. The builders were: Watson Sunderlin, Maple Grove 
Creamery, operated for only two or three years; Porter W. Douglas, 
Big Spring Creamery (once rented by C. C. Douglas), which went out 
of existence about 1900; William L. Collins, Maple Street Creamery, 
once burned, then rebuilt by C. C. Douglas, and afterward owned by 
Wills Bros., but closed within the past year or two; W. S. Douglas, east 
of the village, and run only four or five years; Don E. Seabury, Board- 
man Spring Creamery, built about 1878, and owned later by George 
Green, who discontinued it about 1888; Tim. Costello, in the Quaker 
settlement, about 1878, and operated afterward by A. W. Miller until 
about 1906, when it burned; Sam. Cook and Harrison Hill, near the 
confluence of the Marble and Chateaugay rivers, about 1878, and 
operated for three or four years, when it burned ; Selden Phelps. 
Crystal Spring Creamery, prior to 1870, in the southern part of the 
town, and afterward owned By W. B. Evan, and then by O. F. Chase; 
Charles L. Bentley, on Eiver street, about 1893, but operated for only 
two or three years, and also the Electric Creamery, near the railroad, 
which has become a part of the Spellman produce store; Ira Doud, in 
the Jericho district in 1885, which was burned after five or six years ; 
a stock company, in the Jericho district, now known as the Alder Spring 
Creamery and owned by J. E. Leach ; and a stock company in the village 
in 1909. The only creameries now in operation are the Alder Spring 
and the stock company's in the village. Ralph Swinburne built a cheese 
factory in the northern part of the town in 1872, and operated it for 
several years. 

The establishment of a milk shipping station by the Sheffield Farms 
Slawson Decker Company about 1910 lias doubtless been a contributory 
cause to the closing of some of the creameries, and it would not he sur- 
prising if it should eventually shut up the two that have managed to 
survive, for it pays more for milk than a creamery can earn for its 



254 History or Franklin County 

patrons in making fifty-cent butter. This concern in the season of 
flush production in 1916 distributed to the farmers $25,000 a month, 
and is now of such volume even in the winter that its milk pur- 
chases are a third more in dollars, with expectation that they will at 
times mount to $75,000 or more per month. The prices paid by it in 
1917 for three and eight-tenths per cent, milk ranged from $1.80 to 
$3.60 per hundred pounds, and for milk richer in butter fat it paid as 
much as $3.95. In 1917 it acquired additional land, and began a work 
of alteration and enlargement which will involve an expenditure of 
about a quarter of a million dollars. It is to make condensed milk, and 
has a contract with the government for its entire product. This line of 
business is said to be very profitable, and will enable the company to pay 
high prices for milk. 

The story of the many mills which at various times have lined the 
streams in Chateaugay runs to a period too remote and is too involved 
to make present recital of it in detail possible. Of the grist mills the 
first was built by Elisha Howard in Piatt's Hollow in 1797 for 
Nathaniel Piatt of Plattsburgh, though Hough tells that even before 
this David Mallory had hollowed the top of a stump, bowl shaped, and, 
suspending a pestle above it from the limb of a tree, undertook with so 
rude a contrivance to crush the scant crop of corn raised in the locality. 
What became of the Piatt mill no one appears to know, though the 
premises would seem to have been owned thirty-odd years later by 
Benjamin Blackmore. Doubtless the next real grist mill was built by 
William Bailey, earlier than 1806, which he sold in 1817 to George W. 
Douglass and Simeon Bellows. It was situate on the w r est bank of 
Chateaugay river, a mile west of the village, and in 1835 was replaced 
by the present mill, on the east bank. Bellows sold his interest in 1823 
to John Scriver, and he to Douglass in 1839. The property has 
remained ever since in the Douglass family, but has been idle for a 
number of years. Next came the mill in the northern part of the town, 
at Earlville, which was built by Beuben Church at an unknown date, 
and sold by him in 1852 to David and John Craik. It passed out of 
existence about twenty years later. In 1859 John A. Sabin and John 
B. Bort built a grist mill on the Boardman Brook, in the village, which 
was bought by Willard S. Alvord and W. W. Scriver in 1868 — Scriver 
selling in 1872 to Alvord, who continued to operate it until it was 
burned, a number of years later. Still another mill was built by Mr. 
Bort in 1868, on the Chateaugay river, just above the Douglass prop- 
erty. It passed to the ownership of Eli B. Smith, who sold it in 1874 



Chateaugay 2;"):") 

to William W. Scriver and John W. Roberts, who operated it for several 
years. It was dismantled eight or ten years ago. 

The sawmills have been numerous, hut none of them large. The first 
was erected in 1797 or 1798 for Mr. Piatt, near the grist mill in Piatt's 
Hollow. William Bailey is understood to have built one early, but at 
what point is unknown. Simeon Bellows had one near the Douglass 
grist mill, and leased it in 1822 to George W. Douglass. It was 1 turned. 
Of the many others only the following are traceable, and even as to 
these dates and chains of ownership can not be followed with certainty : 
William Hilliker, John Vernal very early, George Hilliker, Rufus Copps, 
Alfred Copps, Alexander Lewis, John H. Keese in 1833, Thomas Ben- 
nett, James Brown and Hiram Palmer (afterward leased to Henry B. 
Smith, and then to John P. Badger), Eli B. Smith and Willard S. 
Alvord — eleven mills in all on the Marble river, some of them more 
than three-quarters of a century ago; Ephraim Percy and Comfort 
Brayton at Brayton Hollow, the Percy mill having been owned later by 
Garret Percy, William Wood, and John P. Badger and John A. Johns- 
ton, and that of Brayton having been built by George Beach before 
1834; Samuel Cook, a short distance below Brayton and Percy; Frank 
Atwater, above Brayton, and owned subsequently by Samuel Stewart, 
and then by Ezra Sweet; Edward Lancto, about 1850, near High Falls; 
Reuben S. Church, in the northern part of the town, at an unknown 
date, but sold to the Craiks in 1851, and by them to William Philp; 
Selden Phelps, near the Bellmont line — the property going later to 
Oscar F. Chase; and Harrison Hill in the northern part of the town. 
It was from this mill that Mr. Hill, then an ardent Democrat, drew a 
load of slabs to the village for a bonfire in celebration of the election of 
President Cleveland, and in his enthusiasm burned the wagon as well as 
the slabs. The Alvord mill was erected as a steam mill because the (low 
of water in the Boardman brook had been diminished by taking the 
spring as a source of supply for the village, and its surplus power was 
used in operating the grist mill. The only sawmill now in operation is 
one in the village, owned by Harrison Hill, and operated by steam 
power. 

A planing mill which did a large business and employed a dozen or 
fifteen men was built by George T. Hall near the railroad station in 
1873, but was torn down after a few years. 

There used to be six starch factories in the town, which were under 
many changes of ownership during their existence. One was built near 
High Falls by Clark A. Patterson; one in the extreme southern part of 



256 History of Franklin County 

the town by George T. Hall, who had as partners later Wm. S. Douglas 
and Christopher Briggs, and which was owned also by Douglas & Chase ; 
one on Marble river, built by Thomas Bennett, and then owned by 
Adams & Jenkins, and finally by Jenkins alone ; one on the same stream, 
near its junction with the Chateaugay, which numbered among its 
owners George B. Greene, John P. Badger, Andrew J. Day, George T. 
Hall, and John B. Hayes; one by Patterson and Douglass, on Marble 
river; and one at or near the site of the Craik grist mill, built in 1873 
by W. W. & H. E. King, of Malone. Destruction of starch mills by 
fire was not infrequent, and the Greene factory was burned twice in as 
many years. 

The first tannery was built by Jacob Smith on his farm in the north- 
eastern part of the town, and the second probably by his son. Colonel 
Thomas Smith, on the Boardman brook. At least it was sold by him 
in 1829 to William V. Derby, remaining in the Derby family until 
1876, though leased during the Civil War to Enoch Miller of Malone. 
and in 1872 to Clark Brothers. In 1876 William S. Douglas bought it, 
and in association with his son, Hiram A., enlarged it to a mammoth 
establishment, in which over a hundred men were employed. Market 
conditions for leather were then unfavorable, and the concern lost 
money. It was burned in 3 891. Had this misfortune been averted and 
business continued a few years longer, the tannery would have earned a 
fortune, as prices became higher almost at once after the fire. Calvin 
S. Douglass had a small tannery near his grist mill about 1885. Harvey 
Higgins operated it for him. 

Edgar A. Keeler erected a foundry on tbe Boardman brook, near the 
tannery, in 1861, and operated it until 1865, when he sold to P. L. 
Lyman and Samuel M. Moore, but came into ownership again five years 
later. During the Lyman-Moore control they added and ran a carding 
mill. The building was destroyed by fire in 1871. 

In 1892 Alexander Johnston and Bruce C. Bort, operating under the 
name Chateaugay Pulp Company, built a pulp mill a half a mile above 
the High Ealls. Afterward William Johnston came into sole owner- 
ship, and the property is still operated and owned by his estate. 

In 1895 Charles E. Martin and J. Ovette Smith of Plattsburgh and 
Bruce C. Bort, John S. Van Vechten, Daniel S. Coonley and Adam M. 
Bennett of Chateaugay organized the High Falls Pulp Company, 
capitalized at fifty thousand dollars, and built a pulp mill at the High 
Falls. Some of the original stockholders dropped out, and B. S. W. 
Clark bought an interest. The capital was increased to one hundred 



Chateaugay 257 

and fifty thousand dollars, and a paper mill was added. The business is 
still continued, and is prosperous. New York World interests are the 
present owners.* 

The Chateaugay Excelsior Company was incorporated by W. T. 
Thayer, A. M. Bennett, E. E. Humphrey and C. L. Bentley in 1902, 
and the Star Excelsior Company by W. T. Thayer, F. W. Beman and 
Dr. J. W. Campbell in 1907. The Globe Excelsior Company was incor- 
porated in 190? by C. L. Bentley, Adam M. Bennett and Floyd Shu- 
felt. Each of these companies built and operated a mill. That of the 
Globe was bought by the Chateaugay in 1910, and the Star was burned 
in 1911. The present stockholders in the Chateaugay Company are 
W. T. Thayer, A. M. Bennett and D. E. Seabury. There are few lines 
of manufacturing which experience a wider range of activity and 
depression, and when prosperity prevails the returns are exceptionally 
good. In one year one of these companies paid dividends of two 
hundred per cent. 

If public inns offered less luxurious accommodations in the olden 
time than those of to-day, the wayfarer had at least a wider choice then, 
for a tavern was to be found every two or three miles throughout this 
section. Most of them were at first merely the rude farm residences of 
the landlords, with a spare room or two for guests, and some were only 
log cabins. Their customers were altogether either residents who 
patronized the bar or immigrants from New England requiring a night's 
lodging and a meal or two on their way to the locations which they had 
in mind for homes farther to the west. A little later the taverns became 
a bit more pretentious, but fewer in number, and the distance between 
them greater. These were usually relay points for a change of the stage 
coach horses, such changes being made once in every eight or ten miles. 
The Chateaugay town records show no less than nine licenses granted 
to taverns in 1806, and I am told that the fee at that time and for a 
number of years subsequently was three dollars each. Two of the nine 
were located in what is now Burke, and one in Clinton. The other six 
of the licenses were to Chauncey Mooers at a point two and a half miles 
east of the present village ; Abner Pomeroy, in the eastern part of the 
town, or possibly just across the Clinton county line, which was desig- 
nated in a military order in 1813 as the place where one detachment of 
American troops should be stationed; and James Ormsbee, Aaron 
Beman, Nathan Beman and Jesse Ketcham, all of whom except 

"This mill was burned April 28, 1918, with an estimated loss of $300,000; 
insurance, $250,000. It is to be rebuilt, larger than before. 



258 History of Franklin County 

perhaps Ketcham lived within the present village limits. Ketcham's loca- 
tion I have been unable to fix, but incline to the opinion that it was 
near the Burke line. In 1810 these same town records show licenses 
granted to Barnabas Hatch (the father of James in Burke), whose inn 
was located about two miles west of Chateaugay village ; to John Vernal, 
who was then at the Chauncey Mooers stand; to Samuel Person, two 
miles south of the Corners ; and to Ealph Shepard and Amos Eldridge, 
in the village. In 1811 Colonel Thomas Smith was licensed. Accord- 
ing to the best information that I am able to obtain, Colonel Smith had 
then built the Franklin House, which stood on the northeast of the 
Four Corners, and which was continued as a hotel under different land- 
lords until it burned in 1857. It was kept at one time by Harry 

Hilliker, and later by Fred Vaughn and Cartwright. Other 

pioneer landlords were Buckley Johnson, Ashbel and John Sanborn, 
and William G-. and Samuel Eoberts. Nicholas Hall had a hotel a 
number of years later in the now seemingly unsuitable locality about a 
mile west of the village, Garret Percy one in Brayton Hollow, and 
Deacon Eoberts one on the Boardman brook. The Vernal hotel was 
sold in 1831 to William Hilliker, who conducted it then for a short 
time, and again for many years. A part of the original house is still 
standing, and is occupied by Melvin Hilliker. L. E. Eisley was land- 
lord here for two years, as lessee from Hilliker, when he built a new 
house near by, on the county line. It was burned twice within two 
years. Eisley continued to keep it until 1852. The Eoberts House, now 
the Chateau, was originally a log structure, built in 1837 by John and 
Alonzo Eoberts, who were landlords there for a considerable time, and 
who replaced the log with a frame building. Among their successors 
have been Chauncey Smith, Samuel Eoberts, Timothy Ladd, George 
Ladd & William Mansfield, Julius D. Eoberts, George Howe, Luke 
Brooks & Jefferson Eoberts, Cyrel Hutchins, W. H. Finn, Dwyer & 
Jenkins, and now Thomas Dwyer. Jenkins & Dwyer practically rebuilt 
and modernized the house a few years ago. The Union House was 
originally the residence of Theodorus Eoberts, and fronted on Main 
street. When the Mitchell and Jackson block was erected it was moved, 
a little to the south and made to face on Depot street. Included among 
its proprietors have been T. P. Eoberts, Alanson Eoberts, M. A. Knap- 
pin, Hoel S. Farnsworth & Son, Silas W. Hatch, Jacob Morgan, John 
Duffin, Eobert Simpson, and now Mrs. Duffin. The proceedings of the 
board of supervisors for 1857 show that Mr. Knappin presented a 
curious petition. It recited that he had paid forty dollars for a license, 



Chateaugay 259 

and demanded a return of the money because the license had failed to 
give him a monopoly of the liquor traffic — grocers and others having 
engaged in the business without licenses. Of course Mr. Knappin's 
petition was ignored. 

General ^'infield S. Scott was once a visitor to Chateaugay on a 
military tour of inspection — probably at about the time of the Cana- 
dian rebellion, when United States troops were stationed along the 
border for enforcement of the neutrality law. The story is told that his 
gigantic size (he is said to have weighed three hundred and thirty 
pounds) occasioned a good deal of comment, whereupon one resident 
declared that there was a still bigger man living in the vicinity, viz., 
Matthew Reynolds at Brainardsville. Dispute arising over the claim, a 
yoke of oxen was sent to Brainardsville for Mr. Reynolds, upon whose 
arrival it was shown that he weighed thirty pounds more than General 
Scott. 

Among some of the older residents the tradition is prevalent that 
Chateaugay might have been the shire town of the county had its super- 
visor not accepted a bribe to absent himself when the matter was 
decided. The originator of the story, as well as those who have accepted 
it as true, must have overlooked the facts that at the time Chateaugay 
was a part of Clinton county, that Franklin county was not then in 
existence and of course had no board of supervisors, and that Malone 
was named as the county seat by act of the Legislature upon a citizens' 
petition, because, as explained in the legislative committee's report, 
the town was nearly central as regards the then and probable future 
population. 



CHAPTER XII 
CONSTABLE 

Constable was erected from Malone (then Harison) March 13, 1807, 
and originally included Westville, Fort Covington, Bombay and the 
St. Eegis Eeservation. It is now the smallest town in the county, com- 
prising only a part of one township, assessed as 20,037 acres. In 1810, 
three years after its erection, and when it included Westville, Fort 
Covington and Bombay, it had a population of 916, or 149 more than 
Malone, and 291 more than Chateaugay. Strangely enough, the popu- 
lation increased slightly during the war of 1812, but through the erec- 
tion of Fort Covington it decreased to 637 in 1820. In 1825 it was 
1,016, but Westville having been set off in 1829 it was only 693 in 1830. 
In the decade from 1830 to 1840 the gain was 429, and 558 from 1840 
to 1860, the population in the latter year (1,680) having been the 
largest ever shown. Between 1860 and 1880 there was a loss of 414, and 
since 1880 the fluctuations have been slight. The inhabitants now 
number 1,331, of whom 78 are aliens. There was a considerable influx 
of French Canadians between 1837 and 1840, and also a large Irish 
immigration both before and after that period. Descendants of both of 
these nationalities comprise a large percentage of the present popula- 
tion. The earlier settlements were almost wholly in the southern and 
central parts, development in the northern section having been later 
and for a time slower. 

The town derived its name from William Constable of the Macomb 
syndicate, to whom the lands in township number three had been appor- 
tioned. It has two hamlets — Constable, lying west and south of the 
center, and Trout Eiver on the Canadian frontier. Neither has a popula- 
tion of more than one or two hundred, nor is either as good a trading 
point as it used to be. Of mercantile establishments there are now only 
two at Constable, and at Trout Eiver but four. The former place has 
also a grist mill, a creamery, a small shop or two, a hotel, the town 
house and the school house, three churches, and a small group of houses. 
At one time it had also a dyeing, carding and fulling mill, a tannery, 
a sash and door factory, and a starch factory or two near by. At Trout 
Eiver, besides the four stores, there are two churches, a couple of shops, 
one hotel, a school house, a customs office, and a few dwelling houses. 

[2601 



Constable 261 

Years ago there were in addition two tanneries, a grist mill, a planing 
mill, a saw mill or two, a creamer}' and a starch mill. A livelier and 
more important place for a small one was not to be found anywhere in 
this locality. Three-quarters of a century ago, and even down to 1874 
or 1875, the volume of trade at both places, though more particularly 
at Trout Kiver, was large. As merely a suggestion of how large opera- 
tions sometimes were there, it is known that Sidney W. Gillett once 
had ten thousand dollars tied up in potash alone, and Lyman J. Folsom 
a much larger amount in butter, on which a quick break in prices cost 
him a quarter of his investment almost overnight. Mr. Folsom bad, too, 
a two-story and basement building literally packed with merchandise, 
and kept six or eight clerks busy. His trade came from both Canadian 
and American farmers, and is believed to have been the largest of 
any store in the county. If it be wondered where the capital came 
from for such extensive operations, the answer is that almost every- 
body in the vicinity who had saved a bit of money would bring it to 
one of the merchants at this point, and insist upon his taking it for 
use in his business. It is also a remarkable incident of the mer- 
chandizing not only at Trout Eiver, but in tbe like " line " stores else- 
where, that while many of the dealers accumulated what was deemed 
comfortable fortunes for the time and place, almost every one of them 
was overtaken by disaster — sometimes while still prosecuting business 
where their money had been made, and sometimes in ventures in which 
they engaged at other points. Mr. Gillett. the "Websters and Mr. Folsom 
are striking illustrations. Nathan L. Knapp and Edwin L. Meigs were 
exceptions, and yet the fortune of the latter was dissipated in the next 
generation. 

Smuggling of goods by customers of the " line " stores was usual and 
general, the stores having counters on each side of the boundary, and 
the extent of this illegal traffic was quite beyond present conception. A 
good deal of it involved simply buying from a counter in foreign terri- 
tory for the customers' own consumption, which was practiced commonly 
by the very best people in both countries — men and women who were 
devout church members, and who would have scorned to cheat or wrong 
a neighbor, but saw nothing dishonest or discreditable in evading the 
payment of customs duties; and for that matter, were seldom watched 
or disturbed by the customs officers, who usually confined themselves to 
looking after bigger game, for there were others who almost made a 
business of smuggling — planning their work cunningly and operating 
so extensively that if caught with the goods their loss in many instances 



262 History of Franklin County 

must have spelled financial ruin, and perhaps imprisonment as well. 
Livestock, butter, opium, liquors, wool and woolen fabrics and some other 
manufactures were thus brought out of the Dominion here clandestinely 
in great quantities, and tobacco also in an early day, while kerosene, 
prints, cotton sheeting, and sometimes sugar, tea and tobacco were 
among the articles that surreptitiously went the other way. Those who 
engaged in smuggling livestock were usually only small operators, run- 
ning in a single animal or two at a time, and now and then paying a 
duty on one with the idea of thus averting the suspicion of the officer; 
but regular dealers, like William Dempsey, whose shipments of cattle 
and horses to city markets ran for a long time into thousands of dol- 
lars a year, could not afford the risks attendant upon smuggling, and 
rarely, if ever, failed to make proper entries and pay the scheduled 
duties. There were informers at times, who received a share from the 
seizures that they caused to be made, but these were usually spotted and 
so execrated both by the smugglers and by their neighbors generally 
that they found it more comfortable to leave the locality than to con- 
tinue to abide in it, though there was no such degree of contempt and 
ostracism for the man who informed for the sake of evening a quarrel 
as for him who acted for gain. Until about forty years ago, the customs 
officers received, in addition to their salaries, a third part of the value 
of any goods that they seized. Many stories are told of the tricks 
played upon collectors, and especially upon Isaac McMaster in the years 
following soon after the civil war. Mr. McMaster was extremely con- 
scientious and devoutly religious, and clerks and proprietors alike in 
the " line " stores at Trout Eiver took delight in selling him goods from 
the Canadian counter without a suspicion on his part that he was buying 
foreign and dutiable articles. His distress upon learning of his innocent 
violation of the law was great, and ho invariably penalized himself by 
paying the duties. On prayer meeting nights, when he was sure to be 
in attendance, the men addicted to smuggling made it a point to be 
active. And yet it may be questioned if successful smuggling was 
greater during his term of office than it was under other collectors who 
mingled more among men. For many years after such operations had 
been practically discontinued, and when the statute of limitations had 
run, a common form of evening entertainment in the stores was the 
recital by one or another former smuggler of how he deceived the offi- 
cers or how narrow had been his escapes from capture and the loss of 
his goods. But there is not enough difference now between State and 
Canadian prices for most commodities to tempt strongly to evasion or 



Constable 263 

violation of the customs laws, and smuggling on the old scale is little 
practiced. 

In its southern part Constable is broken by hills, but the northern 
section, though undulating, is as nearly a plain as any other equal area 
in the county. It was originally densely wooded by both pine and hard 
timber, and it is told that in the lumbering operations here by the 
men of Westville more than a hundred years ago the largest timbers 
required eighteen yoke of oxen and two spans of horses to haul them to 
Salmon river, whence they were floated to Montreal. The town is 
watered by a number of brooks, by the Salmon river, which flows for 
about a mile through the southwestern corner, and by Trout river and 
Little Trout river, which join in the northern part. The soil, though 
generally light, is rich and heavy in a few localities. Market gardening 
is practiced successfully and upon a large scale, especially by Herbert 
P. Langdon & Son, successors to Fayette Langdon & Son, who entered 
upon the business some fifteen years ago. Their first venture was melon 
raising, which was successful for a time, but latterly has been a failure, 
and therefore abandoned. At present the concern's specialties are early 
cabbages, early corn, early tomatoes, onions, sweet peppers, etc. Of 
corn they market forty to fifty thousand cars in a season, and of toma- 
toes eight hundred to a thousand bushels. Most of their products are 
shipped to summer hotels in the Adirondacks at fancy prices, though 
considerable quantities are sold in Malone also. They have developed 
a particularly early and fine tomato, called the Langdon Strain of 
Earlianas, from the most carefully selected specimens of which they 
put up large quantities of seeds for sale to seedsmen. For the choicest 
of these seeds they have no difficulty in disposing of all they raise at 
five dollars per ounce, with other grades selling at varying figures down 
to sixty cents per ounce. They had a contract in 1916, outside of the 
Earliana seed, to furnish a large house with all of the seed from two 
acres that were cultivated solely for this purpose. Their tomato seeds 
alone brought them two thousand four hundred dollars in 1915 ! Mrs. 
Sherry Vanyea, E. A. Cooper, Edward Lynch and others also operate 
here as market gardeners. About twenty years ago Gaius A. Harmon 
established a cannery, in which he packed from 500 to 750 cases of 
tomatoes a year ; but the crop was not sure enough every season to make 
the venture profitable, and the business was discontinued. The first 
garden strawberries grown in Franklin county for market were raised 
by Lorenzo Coburn in Constable in 1857. Early in the season he con- 
tracted the entire crop to a fruit dealer in Malone at twelve cents a 



264 History of Franklin County 

quart. His largest one day's picking, on a Saturday, was sixty-four 
quarts, which so astonished and frightened the dealer, lest the berries 
should spoil before he could sell them, that he repudiated his contract, 
and Mr. Coburn then disposed of the fruit by peddling it from door to 
door through the village. Since then single growers here have picked 
a thousand quarts each in a day, and Malone consumers have taken 
from dealers and growers as many as ten thousand quarts in a single 
day; and a dealer told the writer thirty odd years ago that he had 
orders which would warrant him in buying fifty thousand quarts a day 
for shipment if he could get them. One season thirty years ago the 
price fell to five cents a quart in quantities. 

The St. Lawrence and Adirondack E ail way, which is a part of the 
through line from New York to Montreal, enters the town about mid- 
way between the southeast and the southwest corners, and traverses it 
in a northeasterly course to the northwestern corner of Burke. There 
is but one station in Constable, which is about a mile east of the Cor- 
ners. Incidentally, it is of interest to note that the first survey for the 
Ogdensburg division of the EutTand Eailroad ran along the ridge back 
of Fred Bell's residence, crossing the river almost directly west of the 
cemetery. The rise by this route to the Summit was so great, however, 
that one farther to the south, through Malone, had to be substituted. 
Otherwise Constable would doubtless have been the principal 'town in 
the county. Improved highways bisect Constable from the Malone line 
north to Trout Eiver, and from the Burke line west to Westville. And 
speaking of highways, speculative conjecture carries us to a time long 
antedating the first white settlement. Where Charles Denio now lives, 
near the Bishop bridge, over Trout river, Indian relics (a stone hatchet, 
a stone head for a war club, etc.) have been dug up from time to time, 
and a gentleman who had made a study of Indian customs, visiting the 
locality a few years ago, declared the opinion that the place had been 
the summer camping ground of a band of aborigines in the remote 
past. Premising that all streams were formerly of greater volume than 
now, he concluded from the character of the place and its surroundings 
that it had been the custom of the Indians to ascend the river from the 
St. Lawrence to this point, where there is a fine spring and the land 
is light and the exposure warm, to plant and tend their fields of maize. 

Be that as it may, our first actual knowledge of the region, and it 
is scant for a number of years, dates from 1800. There seems to be 
good authority for the statement that the first white settlers were Jona- 
than Hapgood and Christopher ("Kit") Austin, who were relatives, and 



Constable 265 

came from Milton, Vt., locating on the south line of the present town 
Peleg Austin had a place near by at about the same time. Local tradi- 
tion is that "Kit" Austin was a hunter and trapper, but he must have 
been a man of substance, too, for his holdings in Constable comprised 
nearly three hundred acres, and in 1805 he conveyed one hundred acres 
in Malone, west of the present village, to Oliver Brewster, and a few 
years later fifty acres in the northern part of Malone to Pliny Burgess 
In 1808 he was an assessor of the town, in 1814 a lieutenant in Captain 
Asaph Perry's company of militia, and in 1816 its captain. His Con- 
stable property he sold in 1835 to Daniel and William Bassett. The 
Hapgood farm adjoined Austin, and is still in the possession of descend- 
ants of its original owner. It was here, in the Hapgood house, that 
Malone s first town meeting was held in 1805, when Malone (then called 
Hanson) included all of the county west of Burke, Bellmont and Frank- 
lin. Looking at it now, it hardly seems at first thought that Hapgood's 
could have been the most convenient point for the assembling of the 
people of all this territory; but it is to be remembered that then no 
part of Bangor, Dickinson, Brandon or of any of the southern towns 
had a single inhabitant, and Moira only a very few. The first deed 
recorded in Franklin county conveyed sixty acres east of Constable 
Corners to John Cadwell, who, however, remained for only a short 
time, as shown by the fact that in 1810 as a resident of New Haven 
Vt., he conveyed this property to Alvin Chipman. Cadwell came prior 
to 1805, for he appears on Malone's assessment roll in that year and 
besides his farm, was thought to have twenty-five dollars personalty! 
He was an ensign m the militia in 1811. 

Dr. Solomon Wyman, the first physician in the town, came from 
Vermont m 1803, bought nearly four hundred acres of land, and erected 
a log house. He had recently lost his wife, and the bereavement indis- 
posed him to practice his profession in his new home, though he could not 
have the heart to refuse utterly to minister to the needs of his neighbors 
when there was no otherj physician available. His standing in the pro- 
fession is said to have been excellent, though, with the barest handful 
of people hving in the town, of course his calls could not have been 
many, nor his fees munificent. But between professional earnings, the 
making of black salts and the bounties obtained through the killing of 
noxious animals he appears to have thrived, for in 1810 he had dis- 
placed his log residence with the substantial and commodious frame 
structure that still continues to be the Wvman homestead. He early 
held various town offices, and was a man of force of character and 



266 History of Franklin County 

quaint conversation, as is illustrated by his permission, to a colporteur to 
leave some tracts (tracks), provided the heels should point toward the 
house. His eldest son, Ashley, was a militia ensign in 1822, but after- 
ward removed to Vermont, where he died. Another son, Solomon, 
became a physician, and practiced at Fort Covington, while a third 
son, Lucius, lived and died at the old homestead. During the war of 
1812 a British deserter came to Dr. Wyman's and was cared for by him. 
When he departed he gave the doctor his powder-horn, which is still 
preserved in the family. On it are a number of inscriptions and carv- 
ings. The former include the soldier's name, Hamilton T. Davidson, 
followed by the words, "his horn, made by J. G." Elsewhere is the 
name Jacob Gauy and the date 1776. Among the carvings are one 
representing a battle, another a duel, and others English castles. 

The date of the arrival of James Welch can not be ascertained with 
certainty, but, according to the diary of James Constable, brother of 
William, who visited the town in 1804 and again in 1805, he had 
located at first in Westville, and had been in Constable long enough 
before the first visit of Constable to have enabled him to complete a 
saw mill in that year. This mill was located just above the bridge over 
Trout river west of the Corners, while the Welch house was half or 
three-quarters of a mile up the stream, opposite the present -cemetery. 
At this latter point Mr. Welch kept a hotel and ford, across which he 
assisted immigrants who were moving to settlement farther west, and 
also hired to them his oxen to help haul their loads up the steep hill 
back of his house, from which they followed the ridge road, now aban- 
doned, but at that time the only one that was passable, because the low 
lands were generally swampy. The Welch saw mill was sold in 1813 
to Joseph Coburn, who added a grist mill, and conveyed the latter in 
1845 to his sons Alexander and Lorenzo. Lorenzo was at one time 
principal of Franklin Academy. The saw mill was deeded to another 
son, Thomas M. Both were burned in 1856, together with a shack 
that Lorenzo had built close by for a store. Both mills were rebuilt 
by the Coburns, and the saw mill finally went to decay. The grist mill 
was sold in 1866 to James Gilmour Dickey and George F. Dickey, and 
has since had as owners Cyrel Hapgood, William Lyman, Thomas E. 
Kane, William McKenzie, John McKenzie, Miller Bruce, and now 
Perry Bishop. 

Mr. Constable noted in the diary which he kept on his trips that 
the town was getting only few immigrants in 1804, as settlers showed 
a preference for Malone, but added that indications were that arrivals 



Constable 267 

would soon increase; and upon his second visit, in 1805, he found this 
condition realized. Evidently he expected the larger settlement to be 
a mile or so north from the present hamlet, as he reserved a plot of 
ground at that point for sale as village lots. Mr. Constable fixed the 
price of the other Constable lands at three dollars per acre, with a 
discount, of twelve and a half per cent, on all cash payments. He com- 
plained that trespassers had been stealing timber, and that still more 
had been destroyed by fire — from which it seems a legitimate infer- 
ence that Canadians must have been operating there even before set- 
tlers moved in. The assessment of the lands here still owned by the 
Constable estate in 1805, amounting to 28,013 acres, was a dollar and a 
half per acre. 

Oliver Bell and his sons, Samuel and Freeman, were early comers 
though first locating in Westville. Removing to Constable, Freeman in 
1811 built a frame house, sixteen by forty feet, with wing, a mile west 
of the Corners, on the road leading to Westville Center, and kept a 
hotel m a clearing of an acre and a half. In the war of 1812 this 
house was the headquarters of the commandants of the American troops 
who were stationed in the vicinity, and also of British officers who were 
here for^a day or two after the evacuation by the Wilkinson forces. The 
old bench that stood in the bar-room, and on which the soldiers used 
to lounge when off duty, the old fire-place crane and a spinning wheel 
of that period are still preserved by Fred Bell, grandson of Freeman; 
but the large pewter platter on which the old-time New England din- 
ners used to come to the table and other souvenirs were lost when the 
house was burned in 1908. The old sign, «F. Bell's Inn," that swun* 
for many years from a post in front of the building, inviting immigrants 
to rest and refreshments within, was also lost in the fire. 

Asaph Perry was another pioneer, though nothing is ascertainable 
concerning him except that in 1805, as shown by the assessment roll of 
Malone, he owned a house, farm and mill, valued at $1,155, and was 
thought to have also forty dollars of personaltv; and that he was com- 
missioner of highways in 1807, a militia ensign in 1809 and captain 
from 1811 to 1816 — marching in 1814 with his company, which num- 
bered only twenty-three privates, for the relief of Plattsburgh but not 
arriving there until after the battle had been fought. The payroll 
shows ten days' service. Only two other persons in Malone were 
issessed in 1805 at as high a figure as Captain Perry, and the next 
rear he had to pay on only $437 of realty and nothing on personaltv. 
Jnfortunately the assessment roll does not show in what part of Con- 



268 History of Franklin County 

stable his lands were located. Samuel Bell (who became an ensign in 
1820 and a lieutenant in 1821), John Child, John R. Estabrooks, Peleg 
Austin and Nathan Hobbs were members of Captain Perry's company 
when it started for Plattsburgh, and Samuel Estabrooks was a sergeant 
in it. The latter became its lieutenant in 1816, and its captain in 1818, 
succeeding Christopher Austin, who had in turn succeeded Perry in 
1816. Nathan Hobbs was the father of Judge Albert Hobbs, who was 
in his day probably the best judge of law in the county, though per- 
haps not the most skillful practitioner. Eemembering him as a man of 
austere dignity and scrupulous in all of the proprieties, a story told of 
him as a young man in Constable rather challenges credence. The 
story runs that upon one occasion when a religious meeting had been 
appointed to be held at the town house, and the expected clergyman 
failed to appear, some one suggested that Mr. Hobbs preach, which he 
did, and was afterward fined one dollar for disorderly conduct in having 
presumed to act in a ministerial capacity. 

Not much more is to be learned concerning John Child than is 
obtainable relative to Captain Perry. He was a brother-in-law of Guy 
Meigs, had a saw mill at an early day near the Bishop bridge, which 
he sold to Haran Hastings, the son of Joel. The mill (rebuilt of course) 
is now run by Peter Denesha. Peregrine. "White and Wells P. Bishop 
owned it between Child and Denesha. A daughter of Mr. 'Child mar- 
ried D. P. Berry of Malone, and Mr. Child died at Mr. Berry's, a 
nonogenarian, forty years ago. 

Sylvester and Ira Langdon arrived in 1809, the former returning 
to Vermont soon afterward to be married. A yoke of oxen was a wed- 
ding present from the bride's father, and the couple were eight days 
in making the journey to Constable. The nails with which Mr. Lang- 
don's house was built are said to have been brought by him on horse- 
back from Plattsburgh. He was commonly called " judge," and was 
a man of parts, who enjoyed a wide acquaintance and commanded 
unusual respect — often acting as arbitrator in cases of differences or 
disputes between neighbors. He was a militia ensign in 1814, a lieu- 
tenant in 1816, and a lieutenant-colonel in 1821. 

Cyrell Hutchins, Sr., Joseph and Joel Hastings and Enos Harmon 
came during the war of 1812 or just at its close. All engaged in farm- 
ing, though Joseph Hastings operated as a blacksmith, too. His trip- 
hammer works (listed in the census of 1825 as an iron works) was just 
across Trout river from the Child (now Denesha) saw mill, and 



Constable 



269 



stories of his skill with iron are yet prevalent. He learned his trade 
with Levi ("Tough") Hastings in Malone, and mended mil] saws 
so that they never broke again at the place of brazing, made axes, adzes, 
steel traps, steelyards, augers and mill machinery. His son Alfred 
still has the triphammer head with which he used to work He was a 
mihtia lieutenant in 1826, and a captain in 1831. Harvey Georo-e I) 
Joseph, Isaac, DeWitt C, James M., Alfred and Emery were sons of 
Joseph and Mrs. Alfred Bassett, Mrs. George Pearl of Burke, Mrs. 
Willis W. Bullock of Kansas, Mrs. Aaron Stowers and Mrs James S 
Dudley were daughters. Emery and Joseph were physicians; the 
former died at DeKalb, and the latter in Kansas, where he had a 
narrow escape from hanging in "border ruffian" times. V gang of 
those who were determined to make Kansas a slave State waylaid him 
one night when he was responding to a sick call, and except that he was 
unarmed and that one of the gang had once been attended by him and 
knew him to be a physician he would have been executed. Harvey 
George D., Alfred and James M. were closely identified with Constable 
for the greater part of their lives; all were exemplary citizens, and for 
a long time were among the town's foremost business men Harvey J 
Dudley, ex-county clerk, is a grandson of Joseph. Charles A and 
Hiram of Malone, deceased, were grandsons of Joel, and Herbert C. of 
Saranac Lake, the late Dr. Clarence A. and the widow of Dr H H Rey- 
nolds of Malone, grandchildren. Haran, a son of Joel, had a machine 
shop on the opposite side of the stream from Joseph, below the Child 
saw mill, and made there about every kind of machinery produced in 
a small shop at that time. Among other things he cut whet-stones from 
grindstones. He had a brickyard in the vicinity, which was run after- 
ward by Harmon Hitchcock and Peregrine White, and another on the 
flat just south of the Corners. The male line of descent in the Hastings 
Hutchms and Harmon families has been fruitful, so that the names arc 
among those most common to-day not only in Constable, but those of 
Hastings and Hutching particularly throughout the county, while the 
relationships through marriage are perhaps more ramified than those of 
any other equal number of our pioneers. Even Bangor's remarkable 
record along similar lines seems here to be surpassed. To trace all of 
these lines would make a book in itself. 

The names Anthony Sprague, Artemas Smith and Solomon Cook, 
all then resident in that part of Malone that is now known as Con- 
stable, appear on the assessment roll for 1805, marking them as among 



270 



History of Franklin County 



the first settlers. Little besides that is known concerning therm Wil 
liam B. Buell, the father of Edward A., was born in Constable m 1813 
and, his parents determining to move to Michigan when he wa too 
voung to te taken with them, was brought up by Oliver Bell. William 
"coop'er also came at least as early as 1805, and had la saw miU and 
carding mill north of the Welch or Coburn mills; John C. Deport, 
who had a tannery on Cooney brook, just east of the Corners in whmh 
Daniel I. Coonley subsequently became a partner ; Alden Haskell, who 
had a hotel in 1817; Peter B. Davenport, also an inn-keeper; andGuy 
Meigs wert other early comers. Mr. Meigs became a commanding figure 
n the county, both in a business and in a political sense, and it is 
^g Stable that more data relative to his life in Constable „ not 
had. His activities from 1824 until his death m 1854 are pretty 
well known, but I can learn nothing of him in Constable except that he 
lived at one time on a farm near Dr. Wyman's, where his first wife died 
in 1816 and that he leased a saw mill on Salmon river, in the south- 
Test m 'part of the town, from Jacob Wead in 1829. Whether he ever 
2 n trade in Constable I can not say, but his genius in that hue prob- 
ably made him a merchant somewhere at a very early ag He was 
Constable's supervisor in 1826, when he was doing business at West- 
."orners and was elected sheriff iu 1836. He and his three wives 

are buried in Constable. ' , 

As nearly as I can trace the matter, through conversations with aged 
residents and from the records in the county clerk's office Peter B. 
Dltenport and then Keuben Gillett (the father of Sidney W.) had a 
bote on the corner where Bobert C. and Frank E. Wilson now reside. 
M G lie t had a liquor license there in 1830 and 1831, and M.Daven- 
nort must have preceded him. Then for a good many years the stand 
was a pvate residence, and such hotel accommodations as the hamlet 
Iff rded were to be found at the site of the present Hutchins House. 
Putnam W Sumner had a liquor license there almost continuously from 
XS^Zlsts, though in 1843 the license ran to Jacob Travis who, 
However, was refused a renewal in 1846 upon the ground that he wa 
note p oper applicant to keep such a place." While Mr Sumner wa 
"andtord he had a store in the building. James Tobey the father 
CorneUus P. and Charles, bought the stand in 1845 Other landlord 
there were Goodrich ("Duck") Hazen and Cornelius P. Tobey the 
atter of "horn was proprietor when the house burned in 1868. It was 
rebuilt by Bobert C. Wilson for a private residence, and a dozen or 
fifteen years later became a hotel again, under the proprietorship of 



Constable 271 

Lyman Hutching. It was again burned some fifteen years ago and 
again rebuilt as a hotel. It was here, I think, that Alden Haskell had 
his tavern in 1817. The Davenport-Gillett stand was made a hotel once 
more in 1874 by Cyrell Hutchins, and was so continued for a number 
of years. E. G. Smith ran it at one time. Still another old-time hotel 
was that of Daniel I. Coonley, which was near the Cooney brook, east 
of the Corners. 

After Harry Horton and Charles and Henry Hawkins had ceased to 
carry on a mercantile business at the Corners, Sidney W. Gillett gave 
up his store at Trout River, and located at Constable — selling out there 
to Edwin L. Meigs, and removing to Malone. Other occupants and 
dealers on this site have been Mason & Culver, James and Harvey 
Hastings, James S. Dudley, Fred C. Hastings, Harvey J. Dudley, R. C. 
Wilson & Son, and now Roy B. Child. Across the commons George D. 
Hastings built and conducted a store about 1865, in which he was 
succeeded by J. Nelson Aubrey and Fred A. Dudley, who sold to Her- 
bert J. Buell, and he to Alburn E. Aubrey. Mr. Hastings also built 
and for a time kept the store around the corner, on the road to Trout 
River, now occupied by the post-office, and in which A. E. Aubrey, 
G. A. Harmon, Asa Harmon, Herbert J. Buell and Fred A. Dudley 
were later traders. Still a little farther north there used to be another 
store, kept by Hyson, Jason J. and Henry Carpenter. Opposite the post- 
office building there was, a long time ago, a cheap store or saloon of 
bad repute, built by William Healey, but which is now occupied by 
Harry Priest as a feed and produce store. 

The Cooper saw mill and carding mill, above referred to, was run by 
Cooper & Hawkins in 1830, and was sold by Robert Cooper in 1839 to 
Esek Sprague and James G. Dickey, and by them in 1848 to Myron 
Chamberlain, who operated the property as a clothing, dye, fulling and 
carding mill and also as a sash and door factory. It was next run by 
George W. Works, and finally was bought by Jewett J. and Albert Webb, 
who converted it into a creamery, which it continues to be, with William 
Stebbins as maker. 

Harry Horton became identified with the town about 1826 or 1828, 
and was influential in its affairs for a dozen years. He was a brother 
of Hiram Horton of Malone, and the grandfather of Mrs. H. D. Thomp- 
son and William H. and John H. King of Malone. He operated as a 
merchant and land owner and agent until about 1840 — his store having 
been on the same site now occupied by Roy B. Child. Henry H. 
Hawkins was another notable figure here at about the same period. 



272 History of Franklin County 

Some of the old town reoords are in his writing, which was as sym- 
metrical and handsome as copperplate. He and his brother were the 
first merchants at Constable in 1824. George W. Darling, a physician, 
came in 1822, and practiced with notable success for a long time; and 
Jacob Hart was here as the pastor, of the Congregational church in 
1822. 

The date of the first settlement in the northern part of the town, 
at or near Trout River, is not now determinable, but it was at least 
as early as 1820. Among the first comers were Simeon Witherell, Eras- 
tus Hazen, E. J. Knappin, Andrew MacFarlane, Peter Brewster, Sulli- 
van Tuthill, Orson L. Healey, Augustus Martin, James Gilmour Dickey 
and Washington Wooster. Arrivals a few years later included James 
V. Dickey (a cousin of James Gilmour), Patrick Lahey, Warren Rob- 
inson, Peter Martin, William Scranton, Francis Waggoner, David Web- 
ster, -Sr., Robert Gillard, Aaron Honsinger, John Vandervoort, Ezra 
Warren, James Dempsey, Patrick Riley, and Daniel Hughes. Mr. 
Knappin had an ashery, just north of the international boundary, the 
chimney of which has been made the starting point in many deed 
descriptions. What this ashery meant for a good many years to a good 
many people may be conjectured from the fact that in a sketch pre- 
pared by Mrs. Wallace H. Webster, and published in 1910, it is stated 
that the writer had seen an acre of ground covered with four-foot 
wood, bought at fifty cents a cord, for heating the ovens in which the 
potash was converted into pearlash, and from the further fact that 
when Mr. Gillett ran it and was in trade here he had on hand at one 
time pearlash valued at more than ten thousand dollars ! John 
Lamontaigne made the barrels in which to pack the product, which 
went to Montreal, or fifty miles through the wilderness to Plattsburgh, 
whence it would be shipped by boat to New York. Mr. Martin was 
prominent for a long time, and was the father of many local enter- 
prises. About 1838 he built a saw mill half a mile above the hamlet, 
on the west side of the river, which was burned. He rebuilt a quarter 
of a mile below, and sold the new structure to his son, Jed. This mill 
was carried off by ice. The elder Martin next built another saw mill a 
quarter of a mile over in Canada, in which he included a carding mill, 
and where he also made cloth in a small way and manufactured furni- 
ture. He was several times in the mercantile business also. Mr. Rob- 
inson was the first customs officer here, and his salary was four hundred 
dollars per year. James Gilmour Dickey came in 1825, and for ten 
years was in trade and had a saw mill, in which was a feed mill. The 



Constable 273 

particulars concerning the building of the mill in question are lost, 
but it is thought to have been erected more than a hundred years ago 
by parties from Montreal, which, if true, might explain the timber 
thefts of which Mr. Constable complained in his diary in 1804. The 
same mill was operated later by Sidney W. Gillett, and its products, 
both then and earlier, were rafted to Montreal. Later still it was run by 
Edwin A. and Wallace H. Webster. Before, during and after Mr. Gil- 
lett's time, Trout River was a source of lumber supply for a wide extent 
of country, and it was almost a daily occurrence that teams loaded here 
with lumber by parties from Westville, Fort Covington and points in 
Canada. James V. Dickey was a merchant from about 1828 to 1845. 
Mr. Wooster was the foster father of Mrs. W. H. Webster, who was the 
daughter of Solon Bingham of Burke. Mr. Wooster was customs 
officer for twenty-five years, and was in trade. Mr. Warren, a black- 
smith, was the father of Herrick E. and Washington W. Mr. Lahey 
was the father of Patrick H., late of Malone, and of George of Trout 
Eiver, and Mr. Dempsey of William, now of Malone, but formerly one 
of the best known men in Constable — as square as a die, supervisor 
of the town a good many times, and an extensive dealer in livestock and 
farm products. 

A stone grist mill was erected by Edwin A. and Wallace H. Webster 
in 1858, the walls of which still stand, though cracked by two fires. It 
was next owned and operated by Hector McLeod, who afterward won 
success and means at St. Johnsbury, Vt., and who sold to John B. 
Cameron. Then Thomas Helms had it until 1880, when it burned, 
and Mr. Cameron again came into possession and rebuilt it. Next it 
became the property of Charles W. Hyde, now a druggist in Malone, 
and in 1893 it burned again. Mr. Hyde sold to John Moore, who began 
a re-equipment of the interior, but never completed the work. This 
mill is just over the line in Canada, as also was the old Dickey-Gillett 
saw mill, for there is no point near the hamlet on the south of the 
border where it is feasible to develop a power. 

Trout Biver had at one time two tanneries, on the Canadian side, the 
first of which was built by Alexander and James McNair during the 
civil war, and the second by Hugh Sutherland. Both were burned 
thirty years or more ago. The former had, however, been converted 
previously into a planing mill, which was owned and run by McNair 
and Charles Tuggey. 

A starch mill was built on the American side of the line, probably 
prior to 1860, by the Webster Brothers. It was bought and operated 



274 History of Franklin County 

by Clark Dickinson of Malone, who finally sold it to Jed. L. Martin, 
when it was changed over into a sawmill, to take the place of the one 
on the opposite side of the river that had been swept away by ice. It 
rotted down. 

Besides Mr. Martin and the two Dickeys, early merchants here were 
Goodrich Hazen, Elisha Hollister, Washington Wooster and Orson and 
Joshua Healey. Sidney W. Gillett began trade probably before 1840, 
and his establishment was the best stocked and enjoyed the largest 
custom ever known at this point up to that time. When the Webster 
Brothers succeeded him, about 1850, and had afterward Edwin L. 
Meigs and Nathan L. Knapp as partners for a time, they drew custom 
from points thirty to forty miles distant. Wallace Webster withdrew 
from the firm about 1860, removing to Malone, and the senior member 
continued the business until 1865, when he disposed of it to John R. 
Cameron. Lyman J. Folsom traded here for something like ten years, 
and was succeeded when he removed to Malone in 1876 by Brown & 
McNeil. Alexander Dalzell, Derby & Paddock, John McFadden, Jed. 
L. Martin and Charles W. Hyde were also merchants at one time or 
another. Mr. Hyde went there from Malone about 1880 to open a 
branch drug store for Captain George A. Mayne, then in business in 
Malone, eventually bought the store, added other lines of goods, and 
when he became collector of customs arranged a partnership with the 
late James M. Hastings. Ten years later he sold out, removed to 
Malone, and established the Hyde drug store. Present merchants at 
Trout River are Mrs. John McCaffrey, Albert J. Elliott, George Bruce 
and Berry Brothers, dealers in groceries and meats. Henry McKane 
also has a meat market. Two store buildings where a considerable 
business used to be done, and another which was formerly a saloon and 
liquor store, are vacant, marking the decrease in business that has taken 
place. 

But if there has been a loss in industrial and commercial activity, 
a compensating improvement has obtained in public order and morality. 
Within the recollection of men still living fighting of a fierce character, 
without other motive or provocation than a lust for display of prowess, 
was of frequent occurrence — the combats sometimes being between 
residents and stalwart men from Canada who came solely to settle which 
were the better fighters. Then, too, men who had good horses often 
arranged races up and down the street, while a drunken and howling 
body of spectators looked on as the trials proceeded. The stake usually 



Constable 275 

was a jug of whiskey. Whether because of the prevalence of these con- 
ditions, or with other significance, is unknown, but the place, originally 
known simply as " The Lines," came to be called Villain Harbor. The 
early meaning of the word " villain " not having been that which we 
now attach to it, but signifying a man who held land by a servile 
tenure, and hence a countryman or farmer, it is possible that the name 
may have been applied to suggest that the locality was a desirable point 
for farm settlers. The name Trout River was taken when the hamlet 
was given a post-office in 1852. 

The first hotel at Trout Eiver of which I have knowledge was kept 
by Orson P. Healey in 1831, as the Constable town records show that 
he was granted an inn-keeper's license in that year and again in 1833. 
This record represents the town board as having found the applicant to 
be a fit person to keep a tavern, his establishment adapted to the busi- 
ness, and a hotel there to be actually necessary for the accommodation 
of the traveling public. The fee charged for the first year was five dol- 
lars, which was increased a year or two afterward to six dollars, and 
later restored to the amount first stated — as perhaps the rate of fifty 
cents a month had come to be regarded as excessive and burdensome 
when liquor commanded only two or three cents a glass. Thomas 
Caldwell also had an early tavern here, but whether before, coinci- 
dentally or after Healey can not be ascertained. Alexander and 
Thomas Chisholm built the Frontier House in 1866. It was burned a 
year later, was rebuilt by Frank Larue and Henry Eiley, and was kept 
later by Riley alone. There was also at one time a hotel which James 
Black built and kept. The Franklin House was built in 1876 by 
Patrick H. Lahey, and kept by him until he removed to Malone in 
1884. For thirty years past it has been run by Edward Dolan, and is 
the only hotel in the place. Long ago stages ran from Fort Covington, 
via Trout River, to Montreal, and then the hotels here had many guests. 
Even as late as Mr. Lahey's time every room in his house would be 
taken night after night. It is different now. 

In Mrs. Webster's sketch, previously referred to, she states that at 
the time of the rebellion in Canada, nearly eighty years ago, large 
numbers of Canadians fled their homes, and sought refuge until the 
trouble should be over with friends on this side of the border; and that 
when the Fenian raids occurred in 1866 and 1870 " for twelve miles 
every family but one fled to the States." In the 1870 raid the Fenians 
made their camp on the Lahey farm, about a half a mile south of the 
hamlet; and upon their retreat when driven out of Canada they poured 



276 History of Franklin County 

along the street and through yards and fields in disorderly and panic- 
stricken flight — many of them throwing away their arms and accoutre- 
ments. For years afterward practically everybody in the town who 
wished for a gun or a bayonet as a souvenir of the occasion had one, 
either picked up whefe it had been cast away, or obtained in exchange 
for food. The residents at Trout Eiver at the time of the engagement 
in 1870 were not themselves in much better case than the Fenians, 
dread of possible personal injury or of destruction of property having 
seized many, while curiosity was the dominant condition with others. 
Anxious to witness the battle, so-called, and at the same time to seek 
safety, these latter crowded into the old stone grist mill until it would 
hold no more. The story of these movements is told more fully in a 
separate chapter. 

Besides the starch factory at Trout Eiver, the town had four others : 
One in the southern part, in the Chauncey Child neighborhood, built 
and operated by W. W. & H. E. King of Malone; a second, near the 
Bishop bridge, built by George F. Dickey and Henry A. Paddock, and 
owned afterward by George W. Hale, who abandoned it, and was then 
run until it was demolished by James S. and Harvey J. Dudley and 
Fred €. Hastings; a third, north of the Corners, built by Justus P. 
Culver — owned subsequently by Dickey & Paddock, then by Hiram H. 
Thompson, and last by Dudley, Hastings & Dudley, who demolished it; 
and a fourth, near the Burke line, built by Solomon Fitch of Constable 
and E. P. Deming of Burke, who sold it to be converted into a barn. 
The Culver factory was burned in 1856, when Culver had it, and again 
when it was owned by Dickey & Paddock. 

Sawmills additional to those at Trout Eiver, the Welch or Coburn 
mill at the Corners, the Child mill at the Bishop bridge and that built 
by Asaph Perry, location unknown, but thought to have been on the 
Salmon river, were : one built by Ira Langdon, which is better known 
as the Culver property, and which was owned at one time by Eussell J. 
Hall ; one below the Culver mill, built by Putnam W. Sumner, and then 
owned by Sherburn Ingalls ; one on Little Trout river, built by Hiram 
Estabrooks; one near the Burke line, built by L. D. and E. P. Deming 
of Burke ; and the one on Salmon river which Jacob Wead leased to 
Guy Meigs in 1829. Julius B. Douglass and Allen Dennis had a sash 
and door factory near the Culver sawmill. It was run later by 0. F. 
Hollister, then by George W. Works, and now by Charles H. Drum. 

Constable never had a Masonic organization exclusively its own, but 
its membership in Franklin Lodge of Westville was so large for a time 



Constable 277 

that that organization held its communications, beginning in 1859, 
alternately at Trout River and in Westville. 

Constable Grange, No. 1061, was organized some ten or twelve years 
ago, and has a present membership of fifty-one. It owns the hall in 
which its meetings are held. 

There are no other fraternal, benevolent or civic orders in the town. 

Sheffield Farms, Slawson-Decker .Company, has a milk shipping 
station at the railroad. Its receipts are at times manufactured at the 
station, and at other seasons are conveyed to a like station of the same 
company at Malone, and sent thence to New York. 

The church organizations in Constable now number five, and for- 
merly there were two others. Those now in existence are the Presby- 
terian at Constable Corners (originally Congregational), the Methodist 
at the same place and also at Trout River, and a Roman Catholic at 
Constable and another at Trout River. The records of the Champlain 
Presbytery give the date of the organization of the first named as 1821, 
with Rev. Mr. Armstrong as the organizer, and the date of enrollment 
with the Presbytery as 1822. But the records in the county clerk's 
office contain a certificate that the society was formed May 21, 1817, by 
Rev. Thomas Kennan at the school house, which is stated to have been 
the place where the participants "had statedly attended for divine 
worship," thus establishing the fact that there had been a Congrega- 
tional movement and preaching in Constable for a time previously. 
The first trustees were Solomon Wyman, Samuel Perkins, Alric Man. 
Oliver Bell and John Child. The society has been continued uninter- 
ruptedly since 1821 at least, and usually has had a resident pastor. 
Services were held customarily in the school house until the town house 
was built, and then in the latter. A church edifice was erected in 1844, 
and the dedicatory sermon preached by Rev. Ashbel Parmelee. In 
1847 the form of organization was changed from Congregational to 
Presbyterian. 

A Baptist society whose existence has lapsed was formed in 1833, 
but was always weak in numbers, and, though it held its monthly meet- 
ings and prayer meetings with a considerable degree of regularity until 
about 1878, it seldom had a pastor of its own. It is said to have bad 
thirty-one members at the time of its organization, but tbo highest 
number that it ever reported to the St. Lawrence Baptist Association 
after 1848 was twenty in 1866, and the usual number so reported 
ranged between ten and fourteen. It never had a church edifice, and 
usually worshiped in a school house or in the town hall. 



278 History of Franklin County 

Though it must be believed probable that occasional Methodist serv- 
ices were held earlier, either by circuit riders or by pastors of adjacent 
parishes, the first recognition of Constable by the conference was in 
1836, when it was listed with Westville as a mission " to be supplied." 
It does not appear again in the conference minutes until 1842, when, 
still joined with Westville, it was once more listed as a mission; but, 
with the exceptions of 1842-3 and 1849-50, no pastor was assigned to 
it until 1854. The first pastor, in 1842, was Rev. Matthew Bennett. 
Beginning with 1854, it has been joined almost continuously with 
Westville as one charge. A Methodist organization was effected at 
Trout River about 1860, and a church built a year or two afterward. 
It is a station or appointment with Constable and Westville, a single 
pastor serving the three places. 

A Free Will Baptist Society, with some of the members residing in 
Malone, was formed in 1841. It was always few in numbers, and never 
had a church home of its own. In 1852 it had twenty members. When 
the society went out of existence I am not informed. One of its pastors 
was the Eev. Charles Bowles, a negro, who had been a revolutionary 
soldier. He died in 1843 in Malone, and is buried in Constable. On 
his tombstone is inscribed, "for forty years a faithful minister of the 
Free Will Baptist Church." 

About 1860 a union church society was formed at Trout River, and 
a house of worship erected in 1861, but never fully completed for 
religious usage, as friction developed along denominational lines. Reli- 
gious services were never held in the building except possibly upon one 
or two occasions, and it stood vacant until about 1893, when it was 
leased to the school district for ninety-nine years for school purposes. 
The structure had been veneered with brick originally, but as the 
veneering had begun to fall away in places it was all removed, and 
siding and clapboarding substituted. 

According to Rev. John Talbot Smith, in his History of the Diocese 
of Ogdensburg, the Catholics of Constable were dependent until 1865 
for ministrations of their faith upon occasional visits by priests from 
Hogansburgh or upon visitation by themselves to Malone or Fort Cov- 
ington. In 1866, however, all of Constable was attached to Malone, 
and Rev. J. J. Sherry ministered to it until 1870, when an independent 
charge, called St. Bridget's, was created at Trout River, and Rev. 
Thomas Walsh assigned to it as its first resident pastor, and officiating 
at both Constable and Trout River. A church building was erected at 
the latter place in 1871. A year later St. Francis's church at Con- 



Constable 279 

stable was formed through the efforts of Rev. Father LeGrand of 
Malone, which division of territory, reducing the membership of St. 
Bridget's to thirty-eight families, was thought to render its further con- 
tinuance precarious. The membership has since increased, however, to 
sixty-two families, and is further strengthened by a usually considerable 
attendance by Canadian families. St. Francis's church has a neat 
brick house of worship, erected soon after its incorporation, and from 
1887 until 1918 was combined with St. George's church at Burke, the 
two comprising one charge. The membership of St. Francis's num- 
bers one hundred and seventy-five families. 

Apart from the many smuggling ventures of large volume that for- 
merly served as the basis for gossip in the country stores and at the 
home firesides, and which enlisted the detective energies of federal 
officials, little of remarkable interest or moment attaches to the history 
of the town. The place was scourged by the Asiatic cholera in 1832, 
presumably brought from Fort Covington or St. Begis, where it was 
much more virulent. The death rate at St. Begis was fourteen in every 
one hundred cases ; the percentage at Constable is unknown, but while 
there were a number of deaths the proportion of recoveries was higher 
than at St. Begis. 

During the Civil War, when bounties were voted to encourage enlist- 
ments, the supervisor of Constable refused to sign the bonds by issue 
of which the money was to be provided, and a special town meeting then 
vested authority in Edwin A. Webster to sign in place of the super- 
visor ; but either because of the delay or for other reasons the town failed 
to fill its quota. A number of men had fled, or, in the vernacular of the 
period, " skedaddled " to Canada in order to escape the draft, and, 
therefore, when the names were drawn no man could be found who 
could be held for service. Indeed, it is said that at that time there was 
in the entire town only one able-bodied man within the draft age limits, 
and he, having located only a short time previously, had not been 
enrolled. All of the others liable to service had already entered the 
army as volunteers, or were beyond reach in Canada. 



CHAPTER XIII 
DICKINSON 

An act of the Legislature in 1808, to become effective April 1, 1809, 
created the town of Dickinson from Malone. It then included all of 
what is now Bangor, Brandon, Moira, Santa Clara, Altamont and 
Waverly and a part of Harrietstown — a tract approximating twelve 
miles in width by fifty-odd miles in length, or nearly a half million 
acres as shown by the assessment rolls of the towns named. When 
erected there was probably not a single white inhabitant in all of this 
vast area outside of the townships Bangor and Moira; and its entire 
assessed valuation was only $267,903, and the town tax was $661.06 — 
of which $175 was for wolf bounties, $360.56 for roads and bridges, 
and all of the remainder, $125.50, for compensation of town officials, 
who worked cheap twenty years later, if not from the first. In 1828 
the commissioners of highways, the inspectors of common schools and 
the fence viewers received but seventy-five cents per day each. 

Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, who was Speaker of the House of 
Representatives from 1795 to 1799, and United States Senator from 
the latter year until 1805, was interested in the Macomb* purchase, and 
in the partition of lands among the members of the syndicate became 
the owner of several tracts, including Dickinson, in the western part of 
the county. This township, number seven, was called Annastown, after 
a daughter of William Constable, but Hough attributes the origin of 
the name as applied to the town to a gentleman of that name in New 
Jersey — a statement easily credited in view of Mr. Dayton's own resi- 
dence and his proprietorship of the township. The Dickinson in ques- 
tion was undoubtedly General Philemon, who took an active part in the 
war of the revolution, and hazarded his ample fortune as well as his 
life in the struggle to establish his country's independence. In the 
memorable battle of Monmouth, at the head of the New Jersey militia, 
he exhibited special gallantry, was afterward a member of Congress, 
and died at Trenton in 1809. It seems a reasonable assumption that it 
was because of the Dayton and Dickinson association in Congress that 
the former gave his friend's name to the town. 

The first town meeting was held at the hamlet now known as Brush- 
ton, and it is worthy of remark that as long as Bangor and Moira 

[280] 



Dickinson 281 

remained a part of Dickinson one or the other always furnished the 
supervisor, and that it was not until 1828 that any resident within the 
limits of the present town ever held the office. 

Dickinson as now constituted embraces only 27,753 assessed acres, or 
little more than a twentieth of its original area, so badly has it been 
shorn from time to time for the formation of new towns. Its popula- 
tion in 1810 (when Bangor and Moira were both included) was 411, 
and ten years later (with Moira still a part) only 495. In 1830, with 
Moira then set off, it had fallen to 446, but in the ensuing decade it 
jumped to 1,005, and practically doubled again in the next twenty 
years. The greatest number of inhabitants that it ever had was 2,022 
in 1875, and the number in 1915 is 1,514, of whom 24 are aliens. At 
least a part of the loss here indicated was due to the partition of the 
town to form Waverly in 1880, the decrease since then having been 150. 

Only a comparatively small part of Dickinson is really good farming 
land, while the remainder, though mostly tillable, is rough and rocky. 
The surface is broken by many hills. Deer river winds tortuously 
across the town from east to west a little south of the center, and, while 
not a large stream, has so steady a flow that at a number of points it 
affords excellent power for small mills. The town is watered also by a 
number of brooks. An improved highway leads from Moira southerly 
through Dickinson, and it also has one line of railway — built in 1883 
to facilitate lumbering operations farther south, but now a link in the 
Niew York Central system, and extending from Tupper Lake to Ottawa. 

Like all of our older towns, Dickinson M'as settled principally from Ver- 
mont, and the pioneers were particularly rugged and determined men. It 
is apparent from the census figures already cited that settlement was 
insignificant prior to 1820, and continued small up to 1840. The first 
highway traversing the town was the St. Lawrence turnpike, which 
entered from the west at a point about three miles south from the 
Moira line, and took a diagonal course to the extreme northeast corner 
at East Dickinson. The Port Kent and Hopkinton turnpike was not 
built until some years later, and passed through a rougher section, south 
of the center of the township. Naturally, then, it was along the St. 
Lawrence turnpike that the first comers located. Hough makes Wil- 
liam Thomas from Hopkinton the very first, but adds that he remained 
for only a short time. Apparently the first permanent settlers came 
about 1810, and made their abodes in the vicinity of East Dickinson. 
These included Jesse and Jotham Rice, Jesse and Enoch Irish, Solomon 
Ross (who was a soldier in the war of 1812), and Reuben Cady. Elder 



282 History of Franklin County 

Spooner must have arrived five or six years afterward, as he is credited 
with having been the leader in organizing the Christian church here in 
1815, and Andrew, Colvin, Ira and Orson Potter came before 1812. 
Without attempting to fix definitely the years of subsequent arrivals, it 
is perhaps enough, and all that it is quite safe, to say that Erastus 
Hutchins, Benjamin Heath and Samuel Foster (the latter having been 
a Moira pioneer) were here in 1822 or 1823, and that Zina and Norman 
Eoys, Niah Wood, Simeon C. Harwood, Loderick Butterfield, Alexander 
Dawson, Samuel Niles, Jeremiah Sampson, Major Baker, Peter, Job 
and Artemas Whitney, William C. and Solomon Clark, Thomas Mea- 
cham, Warren Ives, and Eben and David Parks must have come at 
about the same time or a little later; for from 1828 their names recur 
often in the town records as officials. Then these records carry some- 
what later such names as Josiah Bailey, who was town clerk for nearly 
half a century, George Page, Moses A. Dustin, Jonathan Saunders, 
Patrick Fleming, John Eamsdell, William Mosier and Hardy, Harvey 
and Harrison Hazen, Danforth Briggs and Richard Parks, most of 
whom were as self-reliant, resolute and capable men within their several 
walks of life as it ever was the good fortune of any community to 
possess. Not brilliant, having only such education as their limited 
opportunities had permitted them to acquire, and many of them rough 
and some even a bit wild at times, they were yet so sound of judgment, 
so practical and so faithful and conscientious in discharging the trusts 
that their townsmen committed to them that Dickinson came to be par- 
ticularly respected, and to be regarded as a model of what a well 
governed town should be. Descendants of most of the pioneers still 
reside in Dickinson, and follow worthily in the footsteps of their 
forebears. 

Jotham and Jesse Rice, brothers, and Zina and Norman Eoys were 
originally all from one stock, though adopting three separate ways of 
spelling the name. Edward I., a high-class man, a son of Jotham, was 
a lieutenant in the Civil War. Leonard S., merchant at Brushton, and 
Mrs. William M. Clark of Malone and Mrs. Elliston Barse of Dickinson 
are his surviving children. Willard B., formerly a merchant at Bangor, 
and supervisor of the town (who writes his name "Royce"), is also a 
grandson of Jotham. Jesse had one son, Anson, whose daughter, Mrs. 
Hiram Fish, lives at Massena. Zina and Norman Eoys, brothers, 
located near Dickinson Center about 1828 or 1829. Wellington, son of 
Zina, moved from Dickinson to Malone a few years ago, and is now 
engaged in farming in the latter town. Mrs. George Lamson of Dickin- 



Dickinson 283 

son is a daughter, and Sidney Roys of Bangor a son of Norman. 
Solomon Ross arrived before 1812, as he served in a Franklin county 
command in the war of that period. Milton, a son, is a merchant at 
Lawrenceville. Family tradition is that Andrew Potter (the father) and 
Colvin, Orson, Sylvester, Ira and Levi, his sons, all came in 1817, but 
I find on the payroll of Captain Rufus Tilden's company that Levi 
served in that company at Fort Covington between July 8, 1812, and 
January 13, 1813, and that Ira was a corporal under Captain Tilden 
on the march to Plattsburgh in 1814, which would make them earlier 
comers by at least five years than does the family tradition. Levi 
settled at West Bangor, and the hamlet was called Pottersville in his 
honor. Mrs. J. V. R. Bowles of Bangor is his daughter. Ira moved 
from Dickinson to Fort Covington after a year or so, and Sylvester 
located at Brushton. E. H. Potter, merchant at Brushton, is the son 
of Colvin. Marvin, son of Orson, was a captain in the Civil War, and 
two brothers were in the service with him. 

Reuben Cady, who had been a soldier in the war of 1812, and served 
the town as supervisor, kept a stage-line hotel at a very early day near 
East Dickinson, at which town meeting was often held after 1828, and 
where the local militia used to assemble occasionally for "general 
training." He had five sons, Orlen, Almon, Edwin A., William and 
Wallace, all deceased. Edwin and William alone have descendants 
residing in the county. Mrs. Thomas Trumbull of Bangor is the 
daughter of Edwin, and Orlen of Moira, and Clinton W., insurance 
agent in Malone, are sons of William. Two other son's, Amos and 
Hartwell, reside in Dakota. 

Samuel Foster had a hotel a short distance west of Cady's. At one 
time he owed Colvin Potter six dollars, which the latter wanted to use 
in buying a pair of steers. Mr. Foster promised payment after the 
next "training day" if the weather then should be fair, and, surely 
enough, he settled in midafternoon. Inasmuch as liquor then sold at 
three cents a glass, we may guess how abstemious the soldiers were on 
such occasions. Myron Foster of Bangor is a grandson of Samuel. 

Enoch Irish served as a member of a local militia company in the 
war of 1812, and therefore must have been one of the earliest settlers. 
He removed to the West about eighty years ago. None of his descendants 
are known to be living. Jesse, a brother of Enoch, had six sons, viz., 
Jesse, Abel, Jonas, Fletcher, Henry and Sidney. Jesse and Sidney are 
still living in Dickinson, Henry in Moira, and Fletcher in New Eng- 
land. Mrs. Charles Whitney of Malone is the only descendant of Sidney 



284 History of Franklin County 

now living in Franklin county. Mrs. Eldon Skiff of Dickinson is a 
daughter of Jesse, 2d. 

Thomas Meacham must have arrived at least as early as 1808, as he 
appears in the proceedings of the board of supervisors of that year as 
having been paid fifty dollars as bounties for wolves killed. He first 
settled in Hopkinton, moving afterward into what is now the town of 
Waverly, and at one time lived in Dickinson on the Port Kent and 
Hopkinton turnpike. In his old age he returned to Hopkinton, and died 
there or just across the town line in Waverly in 1849. He was not 
identified at all conspicuously with public affairs, but was notable as a 
hunter and trapper. His earnings in bounties for noxious animals in 
the forty years of his activities must have aggregated thousands of dol- 
lars, as his obituary, written by a townsman,. states that he kept accurate 
account of the number of the larger animals trapped or shot by him, 
and that the totals were: "Wolves, 214; bears, 210; catamounts, 77; 
and deer, 2,550. Bounties were payable for all of these except deer, 
and if we average the amount at only ten dollars each, his revenue from 
this source would be over five thousand dollars. Once he trapped or 
shot three wolves in a single day, for which he received one hundred 
and eighty dollars — the bounty at that time having been sixty dollars 
per head. It was he who gave the name to Lake Meacham. 

Jonathan Saunders first located with his father, Green or Greenleaf, 
in Moira before the war of 1812, as at the age of sixteen years he 
served on one expedition in that conflict, acting as a substitute for 
Barnabas Barnum of Bangor. When he began life for himself he 
settled in the northern part of Dickinson. He was the father of Dexter 
and Julius C, deceased, and of Willard J., attorney, of Dickinson, and 
of Oscar of Moira. Amy Shufelt, deceased, of Malone, Mrs. George 
Davidson, and Mrs. Curtis Clark, residing in Nebraska, were his 
daughters. Leslie M. Saunders, lawyer, at St. Eegis Falls, is a 
grandson. 

It is doubtful if half a dozen persons now living remember Loderick 
Butterfield, and even his name scarcely remains a memory in the town, 
though he must have been in his time a man of local importance. He 
was the first merchant in Dickinson, his store having been the stand 
since occupied by Sumner Sweet, Abel Irish & Andrew Wood, Harrison 
Barse, Aaron G. Perry, Luther Perry & Melvin Sowles, Joseph Jessmer, 
Ernest Tebo and Louis Peets. He was supervisor for a number of 
years, beginning with 1828, and was postmaster for a long time. 
Eventually he went to Michigan, where he died. One daughter married 



Dickinson 285 

Eli Gale of Moira, and another Calostin Oooks of Bangor. A son, 
Hinman, died at East Dickinson sixty years ago. 

Peter Whitney, as one who knew him characterizes him, was " an old- 
fashioned gentleman," a man of exceptional parts, the Methodist class 
leader, held many town offices, and was a natural leader of men. As 
with most others of his contemporary townsmen, he had to live without 
luxuries and endure hardships, but nevertheless his children fared far 
better than he himself in his boyhood, for he never had a pair of boots 
or shoes until old enough to earn the money with which to buy them. 
He used to tell that as a child, even in the winter, he always went bare- 
footed to school, a mile distant from his Vermont home. Before start- 
ing he would heat large hard-wood chips, and after running in the 
snow until the cold became unbearable would put down the chips and 
stand on them until he could go on again. He was the father of Barney, 
who became one of the best known and most highly esteemed educators 
in Northern New York, having been principal of Lawrenceville 
Academy, school commissioner for twelve years of one of the St. Law- 
rence county districts, and for a long time superintendent of Ogdens- 
burg's city schools; of Cyrus P., now of Malone, who was school com- 
missioner in Franklin county from 1864 to 1870, and is a surveyor, 
probably more familiar with wilderness landmarks and old surveyors' 
lines than any one else in this section; and of Byron A., the music 
dealer in Malone. Cyrus P. has been the surveyor for A. B. Parmelee 
& Son for more than twenty years. Job and Artemas Whitney settled 
in the southern part of the town, and were only distantly related to 
Peter. 

Simeon C. Harwood was for years town clerk and justice of the 
peace, and the locality of his residence is still known as Harwood's 
Corners, which, by the way, suggests the entering of a protest against 
a practice that is becoming too common of bestowing new locality names 
when a property changes ownership. A name once given to a stream, 
a hill or a corners should be continued indefinitely unless some excep- 
tionally good reason arises for changing it. There was formerly a post- 
office at Harwood's Corners, called Dickinson, with three or four farm 
residences close by. Mr. Harwood finally removed to Moira, and his 
three sons, J. Nelson, Simeon C. and Asaph L., to Malone. 

John Eamsdell came about 1825. His son, Nelson, was born in 
Dickinson eighty-odd years ago, and is now living with a son at St. 
Regis Falls. He was a leading and consistent member of the Free Will 
Baptist church, for which he served as preacher in 1865 and again 



286 History of Franklin County 

about twenty-five years later. Herbert 1ST. and Melvin B., sons of 
Nfelson, represented Dickinson and Waverly respectively on the board of 
supervisors in 1915 and 1916, and are men of standing and usefulness 
in the western part of the county. The former is in trade at Dickin- 
son Center, and the latter at St. Eegis Falls. Fred, another son of 
Nelson, resides at St. Eegis Falls. 

There were three Hazen brothers, Hardy, Harvey and Euney, who 
came respectively in .1828, 1831 and 1841. Harrison, Safford and 
Sumner were sons of Hardy, and George and Horace, both living in 
Dickinson, of Harvey, and Glenn, Dwight, Hollis and Holland, all of 
Dickinson, and Earl of Malone, grandsons. Millard, a son of Safford, 
resides in Dickinson, and Eeuben, another son, in Lawrence. Seward 
and Anson, who lived in Malone for a good many years, were sons of 
Harrison. Seward now resides in Lawrence, and Anson is a merchant 
in Pennsylvania. 

Benjamin Heath came in 1824, and established a stage-line hotel in 
the western part of the town. His son, Milton, became a militia 
colonel, was an unsuccessful candidate for sheriff in 1842, and after- 
ward resided for a time in Malone, and then at Potsdam. A daughter 
of Benjamin married Dr. Petit, who died in the army during the 
Civil War, leaving a son, Frederick, who was adopted by Colonel 
Heath. The Heath hotel burned in 1870. 

Erastus Hutchins settled in 1822. He was the father of Claudius 
and Anson, both of whom served as supervisor, and were active and 
influential generally in town matters. Claudius was a militia colonel, 
and was county clerk from 1862 to 1868 — continuing thereafter to 
make Malone his home. Melburn W. was the son of Claudius, and 
came to be one of the best known men in the county. For years he was 
a justice of the peace, clerk of the board of supervisors, surrogate's 
clerk, deputy county clerk, and president of ihe board of education of 
the village school district of Malone. In 1898 he was appointed an 
examiner of State banks, and removed to New York — becoming the 
head of the examining force. His boyhood friends will remember him 
as the best billiard player and the best ball player in the county, and 
as surpassing them all in every form of athletic sports. He died in 
1911. 

Alexander Dawson was a prominent figure for a long time, and was 
the father of William, who was for a number of years supervisor, a 
farmer and a lumberman on a large scale for his day. Alson and John 
were also sons of Alexander. Guy H., a merchant at the Center, and 



Dickinson 287 

respected citizen, and Alexander, a farmer, are sons of William, and 
Mrs. George W. Dustin of Malone is a daughter. Homer, another son, 
deceased, was landlord for a time of the old Dustin hotel at the Center. 
Joseph B., the present landlord there, is a son of John. 

Warren Ives, accompanied by his brother, John, came from Vermont 
in 1829, with an ox team from Ticonderoga, having lost one of his 
horses through the ice in crossing Lake Champlain, and traded the 
other for the oxen. They were ten days making the journey from 
Ticonderoga, camping wherever night overtook them, and often their 
camp-fire showing wolves prowling near. They located at first in the 
southern part of the town, where Warren kept a hotel for a couple of 
years, and then built the first house at what is now the Center. John 
Thomas, a son of the old Connecticut clock-maker, who was a cousin 
of the Ives brothers, came with them, or followed soon afterward, and 
from him the place took the name Thomasville, by which it was so long 
known. Warren Ives and Mr. Thomas built the first grist mill in the 
town, which was not much of a success, and after a year or two the 
latter and John Thomas moved on farther west. Warren Ives remained, 
and attained a good deal of local prominence. He surveyed many of 
the town's roads, was a lawyer, and served as supervisor for a number 
of years. He and Abial Chamberlain built the first sawmill at the 
Center, on the site now occupied by the Orcutt lower mill, which was 
used exclusively for custom work, as no lumber was then made there for 
market. Chamberlain was a man of eccentricities, gruff and grumpy, 
and liked by nobody. He believed in witchcraft, and boys were his 
particular aversion — which meant, of course, that the boys delighted 
in annoying him and playing tricks upon him. They would set the mill 
running at night, and then send him letters suggesting that the witches 
had done it, and advising him to consult a fortune teller who lived in 
the vicinity, and who confirmed the boys' representation, and directed 
that he burn the saws to exorcise the witches. He followed the advice, 
and presumably spoiled the saws, whatever may have happened to the 
witches. Martin V. B. and H. L. Ives of Potsdam are sons of Warren. 
The former has represented his district in the Assembly. Another son, 
Gideon S., has been twice Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota. 

William Mosier was another of the early settlers, and had several 
sons — John, James, Noble and William, all now dead. Watson, a 
clergyman, but now connected with rapid transit lines and a dealer in 
real estate in New Jersey, is a son of John : and Alfred Mosier and 
Mrs. Fred Hale of Dickinson and Judson and Elbert of Malone are 
children of William, 2d. 



288 History of Franklin County 

Moses A. Dustin, a man of fine character, originally a Vermonter, 
had been a school teacher in Ohio for twenty years before establishing 
himself in Dickinson, where he also taught. His sons were Moses 
Atwood, Ezra T., William Dana, George W. and Alonzo. The latter 
went West when a young man, and is supposed to have been murdered 
and robbed. Communication between different parts of the country was 
not as easy then as it is now, and the exact facts could never be learned 
with certainty. The other sons all became prominent in Dickinson, and 
George W. was for years a county personage of consequence and popu- 
larity. He served in the Sixth Heavy Artillery in the Civil War, and 
afterward was connected for some time with the quartermaster depart- 
ment of the regular army, and for a year or two was private secretary to 
Chief Bushyhead, an Indian. He was sheriff of Franklin county from 
1889 to 1892, and afterward was in business at Brushton. Moses A., 
Jr., was proprietor of a hotel on the Port Kent and Hopkinton turn- 
pike, and then for a good many years of the house at Dickinson Center, 
and was a genial landlord. George W. of Malone is a son of Moses A., 
Jr., and was county clerk from 1880 to 1886. He is at present in the 
real estate business — one of the squarest and most estimable citizens 
the county ever had. Mrs. George H. Oliver and Mrs. John H. Dullea 
of Malone, Mrs. Seth Johnson of Burlington, Vt., and Mrs. James H. 
Putnam, now living in Mississippi, are daughters of Moses A., Jr., and 
E. Dana Dustin, now in New York city, and Mrs. Aloney Bust of 
Malone, Mrs. James Moore of Oneida, and Nita F. Dustin, a teacher 
at Batavia, are children of George W., 1st. 

William C. and Solomon Clark came about 1840. William M. of 
Malone is a son of the former, and George C, the fruit dealer, and Mrs. 
Ira Haskell are grandchildren. Harlan P. and Melvin B. of Brushton 
are sons of Solomon, and Mrs. John W. Genaway of Malone a 
granddaughter. 

George Page was the father of Homer, deceased, and of Watson. 
The latter is distinguished for having a personality that enabled him 
whenever a candidate for office as a Democrat to carry a town which 
was good ordinarily for two or three hundred Republican majority. He 
lived for a number of years at St. Regis Falls. George S. and Burt of 
Dickinson and Robert of Tupper Lake are sons of Homer. Another 
son, Edwin, lives in Missouri. 

Eldred Baker, popularly known as Major Baker, came about 1840. 
I think that he had lived previously in Bangor or Brandon. He kept 
a hotel on the Port Kent and Hopkinton turnpike for a dozen or fifteen 



Dickinson 289 

years, about a mile east of its intersection with the road leading from 
Dickinson Center to St. Eegis Falls. During this period there was a 
good deal of teaming past this hotel, the produce of the region which 
was shipped out going mostly by this route to Black Brook, and the 
supplies that were brought in all coming over the same road from Lake 
Champlain. Mr. Baker removed about 1854 to Dickinson Center, and 
there kept the hotel, the American House, which used to stand near 
where the Orcutt store and office now is. He had several children, all 
of whom except two are now dead. These reside in California. Harri- 
son G. Baker, who at one time had a hotel at Brandon, and was well 
known throughout the western part of the county, was a son of Eldred. 
Denison S. Smith came with his parents to Hopkinton in 1833, and 
for years thereafter his life was full of hardship and privation — his 
clothes in winter being wholly of cotton, and work in the woods even 
in childhood being required of him. Indeed, his people were so poor 
that the boy's shoes were made by his father from old boot legs, and 
his stockings from shreds of wool picked up a bit at a time from bushes 
and fence corners where a neighbor's sheep had shed it, and cleansed, 
carded by hand and spun and knit by his mother. Even his summer 
hats were braided by his mother winter evenings from straw gathered 
by her at harvest time. Mr. Smith's years from about 1843 to 1852 
were spent in New England and in California. The story of his life 
during this period was graphically written by himself, and is intensely 
interesting, but as it does not bear at all upon Franklin county only 
very brief extracts from it are given. His trip from New York to 
California — by sea to a Texan port, thence overland into and across 
Mexico, and thence by boat to San Francisco — was crowded with 
hardship and thrilling adventure. He reached San Francisco with 
barely sixty-two cents of his money remaining, but finally managed to 

journey to the mines, where the cost of living was incredibly high 

meals of the most ordinary sort two dollars each, and sleeping accom- 
modations proportionately dear. Flour sold at a dollar and a quarter 
per pound (equivalent to two hundred and forty-five dollars per 
barrel), and most other eatables at a dollar per pound. At one time 
when suffering with scurvy, and vegetables being necessary to save his 
life, Mr. Smith paid half a dollar apiece for a half bushel of onions not 
larger than English walnuts. Cigars sold at twenty-five cents each, and 
drinks at one dollar. Mr. Smith did some prospecting for gold, but for 
most of the time worked for wages at whatever he could find to do. 
He returned home in 1852, and soon afterward took up his residence in 

10 



290 History of Franklin County 

Dickinson, where he lived respected and usefully until his death, a 
year or two ago. He held various town offices, and during the Civil 
War was enrolling officer for the town of Dickinson, preparatory for a 
draft, under Colonel S. C. F. Thorndike, and afterward was deputy 
provost marshal. Later he was assistant United States assessor of 
internal revenue under U. D. Meeker. Before this he had been a 
deputy sheriff, and as such was assigned to pass the last night of the 
life of Madison Bickford (who had shot Secor in the town of Franklin, 
as told in Chapter XVI) in the cell with him against a possible attempt 
at suicide by the prisoner. Bickford had left a prayer meeting in 
Dickinson to follow Secor and murder him. Mr. Smith speaks of 
Bickford, who was only nineteen years of age, as " a young man of 
more than ordinary ability, and a favorite with the young people." 
Bickford visited pleasantly with Mr. Smith until two o'clock in the 
morning, saying, among other things, that he would not change his 
fate for ten years in prison, and then slept soundly until morning. At 
Bickford's funeral, held in Dickinson, the officiating clergyman declared 
that he had died a martyr, and Bickford's father characterized the 
execution as " Franklin county's murder." Justus D. Smith of Dickin- 
son is Denison's only child. He was for twenty years the private 
secretary of William H. Bussell, of New York, who built a Swiss chalet 
on the Zina Roys brook in Dickinson for a summer home. 

David and Ebenezer Parks, brothers, and Rev. Richard Parks, Syl- 
vanus Niles, Patrick Fleming and Jeremiah J. Sampson were all an 
excellent type of citizens. The Parks brothers were comparatively 
early arrivals. Ebenezer had a son and a daughter, but the family is 
now extinct, while David's descendants are numerous. He had six 
sons and three daughters, of whom John, William, Mrs. John McNeil 
and Mrs. Silas Crocker are dead — all leaving children as follows : 
By John, Fred, Walter, Hazel and Newton, the latter of whom lives 
at Utica ; by William, Joseph and Earl, of Worcester, Mass., and Sadie ; 
by Mrs. Crocker, Edith Wylie of Boston; by Mrs. McNeil, Mrs. Ernest 
LaBounty and Mrs. Roy Harris of Montpelier, Vt. Descendants of 
the others named are: Of Frank, Claude, Leo, Vernon, Anna and 
Lenna; of George, Kyle and Daniel; of Thomas, Edward, Howard, 
Beatrice, Nellie, Bessie of Carthage, Grace of Newton Falls, and Wil- 
liam and Burt of Tupper Lake; of Ira, John of Dickinson, and Mrs. 
A. S. Smith of Saranac Lake. All live at St. Regis Falls except as 
otherwise noted. 

Rev. Richard Parks was of another familv, and did not come to 



Dickinson 291 

Dickinson until about 1860, when he was called to the pastorate of 
the Free Will Baptist church, which, first and last, he served faithfully 
and acceptably for a good many years. He preached also in Burke and 
at a number of other places in Franklin and St. Lawrence counties, 
and was everywhere esteemed a high-class man. He bad three sons, 
George and Nelson, both dead, and Ovett, who resides in the West. 
Ovett E., now living in Potsdam, and Frank, a teacher in the school at 
Dickinson Center, are sons of George. Nelson had no children. 

Mr. Mies came about 1838, and was a blacksmith for fifty years. A 
sister was the wife of Denison S. Smith, and Samuel is a half brother, 
still living in Dickinson. Sylvanus's sons were Noble, Jay and Sylves- 
ter, all now residing in Dickinson, and his daughters were Mrs. Almeda 
Spears, living in Essex county, Mrs. Cora Winters of Dickinson, and 
Mrs. Nettie Day of Lake Ozonia. 

Patri'ck Fleming was of the highest character, and remarkably 
capable. He was town clerk for a number of years, and two or three 
times supervisor. He kept the first store at Dickinson Center. His 
sons, Silas P. and William Alyn, w r ere at one time well known figures 
in the town. The former was in trade and also built, and for a short 
time kept, a hotel, the Centennial, at Dickinson Center. He was a 
fun-loving, rollicking fellow, never contented unless engaged in some 
prank that outraged the sense of propriety of the sober-minded. 
William Alyn became a lawyer, practiced at Brushton and Mai one, and 
removed to Minnesota, where he was elected a member of the Legislature. 

Mr. Sampson located about 1850, and was a millwright. He had 
thirteen children, none of whom was born in Dickinson. All are now 
dead except Mrs. Anna Kingley, who resides at Racine, Wis., and 
Esquire, who lives at Dickinson Center. 

Joseph Bailey, one of the most genial and most accommodating of 
men, came about 1845 or possibly a little earlier, and was a farmer, a 
tanner, a shoemaker and a cooper — turning his hand also to many 
other things if thereby he could help a neighbor or a friend. He was 
town clerk for most of the time for half a century, and served as post- 
master at Dickinson Center during the Civil War. A daughter married 
John Dawson, and still lives in the town. Joseph B. Dawson is his 
grandson. 

A resident of a different sort was Alonzo Clark, born in 1843. At the 
age of forty-six, twenty years of his life had been passed in prison, 
and later he served at least one more term — all for horse stealing. He 
seemed to have a passion for that sort of thievery. In 1889 he was 



292 History of Franklin County 

credited with having stolen no less than 120 horses, and boasted that 
not one had been the property of a townsman. His operations extended 
all over Northern New York and through the middle West. Upon his 
release from prison in 1898 he announced a reformation, and I think 
stole no more. But he had no penitence, and reformed only because he 
was getting old and had found that stealing did not "pay." In 1898 
he claimed that he had stolen 370 horses in all. He died in 1910. 

Dickinson contains no village, and only one hamlet, though there are 
two or three neighborhoods rather more closely settled than the average 
of farming sections — each of which has its distinctive name. East 
Dickinson lies in the extreme northeastern part of the town, and here 
there are a store, a church and a few scattered farm houses. Formerly 
the place had two starch factories, one of which was burned, and the 
other has been converted into a feed mill. Some four miles to the west, 
and on the northern border, is Alburgh (the name indicating plainly 
that the people there were originally Vermonters), and at this point 
there are a store, a blacksmith shop, a creamery and eight or ten 
families. Years ago there was a Methodist chapel near by. Dickinson 
or Harwood's Corners is on the direct road from Moira to Dickinson 
Center, and has a store, a creamery and five or six families resident in 
the immediate vicinity. Dickinson Center, the hamlet referred to. is 
south of the center of the township. Deer river flows through it. It 
contains four or five stores, two churches, a Grange hall (which used to 
be a Second Adventist church), a school house and town house, a rail- 
road station, two grist mills, two saw mills and a creamery. Its 
population is between four and five hundred. 

Dickinson has been the scene of two tragedies of melancholy interest. 
The dwelling house of Esek Hawkins burned September 3, 1852, and 
Mrs. Hawkins and a daughter, aged seven years, perished in the flames. 
In 1865 Henry Meacham, believing his wife unfaithful, shot her through 
the heart and cut her throat as she was clasping her infant child to her 
breast, and then shot himself through the brain. Mrs. Meacham was 
a sister of Cook, the accomplice of Bickford in the murder of Secor. 

The list of those who have been merchants at Dickinson Center 
includes Patrick Fleming, Thomas Leonard, Theophilus Olena, Luther 
Hurlburt, Tuttle & Peck, S. P. Fleming, Tuttle & Conger, George W. 
Dnstin, Alfred H. Olena, S. & Lannis Wilcox, L. M. Stowe, Eichard P. 
Lindsay, Harvey Harrington, H. G. Baker, Watson Page, George Chase 
& Co., Lyndon Young, W. D. Dustin, Fred L. Conger, F. L. Curtis, 
B. L. Orcutt, Eev. A. F. Bigelow and C. A. & C. E. Morehouse. Mr. 



Dickinson 293 

Hurlburt was a brother of former Congressman Calvin T. Hurlburt of 
Brasher, and A. H. Olena, now a prosperous merchant in New York 
city, is a grandson of Jeremiah Sampson. Both were partners for a 
time with George W. Dustin, ex-county clerk. Those who are at pres- 
ent in trade there are H. N. Eamsdell, H. H. Briggs and Guy It. 
Dawson. 

Hotels other than those of Beuben Cady, Samuel Foster, Benjamin 
Heath and Silas P. Fleming, already sufficiently mentioned, were: 
One established by Warren Ives, and purchased about 1840 by Eldred 
Baker, on the Port Kent and Hopkinton turnpike, about a mile east 
from its intersection with the highway leading from Dickinson Center 
to St. Regis Falls, which was kept by him until about 1854, and from 
that date to about 1860 by Moses A. Dustin, Jr. ; one at Dickinson 
Center, next north of B. L. Orcutt & Sons' office, known as the 
American House (torn down in 1882), which Henry N". Bickford, the 
father of James Madison, the murderer, kept for two or three years, 
though he was more a pettifogger in justice's court than a landlord, 
and then for a number of years by Eldred Baker, and, finally, until it 
burned, but not in a particularly attractive way, by a man named 
Cheney; and the present hotel at Dickinson Center, the only one now 
in the town, which was a conversion of the office of Dr. Hiram N. 
Smith of Nicholville into a tavern by Moses A. Dustin, Jr., and kept 
by him until his death in 1894. It was next managed by Steve Fos- 
burg, then by Homer Dawson, deceased, and now by Joseph B. Dawson. 
The tavern on the turnpike where Ives, Baker and Dustin presided still 
stands, but has not been used as a public house for half a century or 
more. Of Mr. Bickford it is said that in manner and temperament he 
resembled the late Hon. John P. Badger, and he was rated a man of 
considerable abilities. Before locating in Dickinson he had made his 
home in Moira. 

The industries of Dickinson were never numerous nor of large 
importance. The local demand for manufactured products was of course 
insignificant, the streams permitted no large power developments, and 
until about thirty years ago all transportation had to bo over poor 
roads, with a considerable haul to the railroad. 

The original grist mill at the Center was almost directly across the 
river from the present Tuttle mill. It was sold by Warren Ives in 
1843 to Allen Lincoln of Fort Covington, and by him to Alpheus 
Conger of Moira in 1863. Conger executed a contract of sale to E. N\ 
Tuttle and L. M. Stowe, but before the conditions had been fulfilled 



294 History of Franklin County 

sold to Frank B. Peck of Hopkinton. While the mill was owned by 
Mr. Lincoln it was ran by Elkanah Shaw, whose son, Levi, was the 
last person to operate it. After acquiring the property under their 
contract, Stowe and Tuttle built a new mill on the opposite side of 
the stream, and the old mill eventually rotted down. Stowe sold to 
Tuttle, who afterward had as partners George Macomber, and then 
William Downey. This mill is now owned and operated by Everett 
Markham, better known, however, as Tuttle, he having been adopted 
by E. K. Tuttle. Upon retiring from partnership with Tuttle, Downey 
built a new mill in 1907 a few rods down the stream, and continues to 
run it. 

The town formerly had four starch factories. One at the Center was 
built by H. M. and Jeremiah J. Sampson about 1857, and was sold by 
them to Milton Heath and George B. Farrar. Bev. B. Parks and Dyer 
L. Merrill afterward operated it, and Mark Page next owned it and 
ran it successfully for a long time. One at Alburgh was built by D. W. 
and C. J. Lawrence and Ira Russell of Moira in 1856. H. H. Thomp- 
son of Malone bought it ten years later, and sold to R. S. Brown and 
Tabor C. Meigs in 1867. It was next owned by Clark Dickinson and 
Thomas F. Mulholland of Bangor, who in turn sold to Wells S. Dickin- 
son and Fayette W. Lawrence. At East Dickinson there were two starch 
factories, one of which was built by Leonard Fish, James Spooner and 
William Rice about 1855, sold by them in 1864 to Sumner Sweet, 
bought in 1866 by R. S. Brown and Tabor C. Meigs, and by Horace A. 
Taylor in 1873. It still stands, but has been converted into a feed 
mill by Horace Lincoln. The other, I think, was built by Charles 
Taylor, who sold it in 1865 to A. G. Perry, and the latter to John V. 
Bowles in 1875. It burned in 1877, and was not rebuilt. 

The first saw mill, as already stated, was built by Warren Ives and 
Abial Chamberlain at the Center, practically on the site now occupied 
by the lower Orcutt mill. Anson Hutchins bought it fifty years ago, 
and a few years later he and L. W. Babcock ran it on an extensive 
scale until it burned in 1878. (Dr. Babcock removed to Minnesota, 
became prominent in politics, and in 1903 was Speaker of the Assem- 
bly.) They had also a second mill up the stream, just across the 
river from the present Orcutt steam mill. Benjamin L. Orcutt came 
to Dickinson from Massachusetts in 1875, and with his brother-in-law, 
William D. Dustin, operated for a time the William Dawson mill, east 
of the Center. In 1879 he and Mr. Dustin bought the old Ives or 
Hutchins & Babcock mill property, the former soon acquiring the lat- 



Dickinson 295 

ter's interest. Since then Mr. Orcutt and his sons, Fred and Harry B., 
have operated the mills, doing a large business, and building up an 
enviable reputation as capable and straightforward men. At their 
lower mill they have an electric power plant, which furnishes light to 
such of the people of the hamlet as choose to use it. 

At an early day Erastus Hutchins and Hardy Hazen built and ran 
a small saw mill in the vicinity of Alburgh, which Anson Hutchins 
afterward owned, but upon engaging in business at the Center sold to 
Milton Lockwood. Alexander Dawson, the elder, and then Jonathan 
Saunders, had a mill a mile farther south. Still another saAV mill was 
built about 1857 at the Center, near where the Dow-ney grist mill now 
is, by H. M. and Jeremiah Sampson. This property was, I think, 
owned and worked later by Anson Hutchins, and then by Stephen 
Dow and George L. Parks, J. W. Webb, and finally by Webb and Willard 
E. Seaver as a tub factory. Yet another saw mill was run by John and 
Alson Dawson on the Zina Roys brook, at about the point where Fair- 
ladies, the show place of the town (a summer home built of stone by 
Mrs. Kobbe, of New York, at great cost) is located. There was also a 
steam saw mill at East Dickinson in the Bowles starch factory. The 
William Dawson mill, above referred to, was originally called the King 
mill, and the timber tract and water privilege were acquired by Mr. 
Dawson about 1870. It shifted ownership between Mr. Dawson and 
Albert Tebo two or three times, and was as often burned. It is now 
out of existence. There was also a small saw mill near Barnes Corners, 
in the same neighborhood as the Dawson mill, built by Bodney Tyler, 
and owned at one time by 0. W. and E. D. Bean. Nothing definite can 
be ascertained about the man King who first had a mill in this locality. 
The mill itself had disappeared seventy years ago or more. 

Dickinson had a tannery as early as 1835 and two in 1845, both 
small of course. The first of these w r as on the farm now owned by Howard 
Davidson, and was operated by a man named Bishop Kingsley. The 
second was Josiah Bailey's, and was near the Briggs drug store, on 
the north side of the river. 

In 1887 Dickinson Center was led into the hope that it was to be 
given an industry which would contribute largely to its growth and 
prosperity. Rev. C. A. Morehouse was at the time pastor of the Free 
Will Baptist Church, had strong inclinations toward business under- 
takings, and had engaged with a brother in a mercantile venture there. 
He then proposed to establish a chair factory which should give employ- 
ment to eighty or a hundred men, obtained the promise of financial 



296 History of Franklin County 

backing by a Chenango county man, and was pledged four thousand 
dollars as a bonus by the citizens of the town. Something like half of 
this bonus was actually paid over to him, but the remaining subscribers 
insisted upon seeing the factory in operation, or at least fully equipped 
with the special machinery required, before " making good " on their 
subscriptions. To this demand Mr. Morehouse pleaded that it was 
necessary that he have the money that had been promised if he were 
to go on with the enterprise. A building was actually erected and 
equipped as a saw mill, but the chair machinery was never supplied. 
As a saw mill the establishment employed from ten to fifteen men, but 
was not a success under Mr. Morehouse. In 1892 Benjamin L. Orcutt 
bought the property, and operated it in turning out hard-wood flooring 
and butter tubs until it burned in 1897. 

The Christian church at East Dickinson was the first religious 
organization in the town, and was formed mainly through the efforts 
of Elder James Spooner, with the co-operation of Jesse and Jotham 
Bice, Samuel Foster and Eeuben Cady. The date of organization is 
given as 1815. For a good many years it was a thriving body, but for 
nearly or quite half a century now it has been inactive, and without a 
regular pastor. Its records are understood to have been destroyed by 
fire a few years ago. The church edifice was erected in 1861.* 

The second church organized was the Free "Will Baptist, at Dickin- 
son Center, in 1835, with Elder Charles Bowles presiding, John Bams- 
dell first deacon, and Jesse Bice clerk. The records are complete from 
the date of organization to the present, and the minutes of the early 
church meetings are extremely interesting in parts — particularly 
where they reveal the watchfulness that the church undertook to exer- 
cise over the daily walk and conduct of individual members. Any 
member was free not merely to complain of another, but apparently 
was expected to do it if cognizant of any impropriety. Thus at meeting 
after meeting charges appear to have been threshed out, first against 
one offender, and then against another. Upon one occasion the pastor 
himself was formally charged with falsehood, but was exonerated. Other 
delinquencies alleged were that the accused had failed to attend meet- 
ings regularly ; had been guilty of improper home conduct in having 
failed to be considerate and gentle with wife or children ; had been 
quarrelsome with neighbors ; had indulged in intemperate language or 



* The church was opened again for worship in 1916, a minister of the Holiness 
Movement (Rev. Philip Guiter. residing at Moira) officiating, and the attendance 
at meetings being surprisingly large, and the interest marked. Mr. Guiter held 
services also in the old Baptist church near Alburgh. 



Dickinson 297 

the use of "hard expressions"; had shown stubbornness; or even had 
used ardent liquors; in a word, one had to walk with the utmost cir- 
cumspection if he would escape rebuke and discipline at the hands of 
the church. Such inquisitorial methods would not be tolerated to-day 
for an instant. One resolution adopted by the church provided that 
a member absenting himself from three consecutive meetings should 
be considered " as no more of us," and another pledged abstention from 
intoxicating liquor except upon a physician's prescription, and even 
then to use it « only for the glory of God." In 1860 the society deter- 
mined to proceed to the erection of a house of worship, which was com- 
pleted in 1861 or 1862. The timber used in its construction was given 
by Mr. Pierrepont, the then owner of such lands in the township as had 
not been sold to settlers. Mr. Pierrepont gave the bell also. Seemingly 
there has always been a strong interest in the church upon the part 
of its members, and it is seldom that it has been without a pastor for 
any considerable length of time. Its membership is about one hundred, 
though not all are now resident in the town. Within a year or two it 
has affiliated with the St. Lawrence Baptist Association, which is com- 
posed for the most part of regular Baptist societies, the differences 
between which and the Free Will Baptists are in this day not wide. The 
former are Calvinists and the latter Arminians. Then, too, the Bap- 
tists were formerly understood to be close-communionists, while the 
Free Will Baptists have always been open-communionists — which dis- 
tinction has now, however, been practically wiped out. But since I 
am not expounding theology, but only telling a story, enough on this 
point. 

A few words about Elder Charles Bowles, who organized the church, 
will not be uninteresting. A biographer says that he was the son of a 
full-blooded negro who was a servant and of a daughter of Colonel 
Daniel Morgan of Virginia, whose rangers in the revolutionary war 
were pronounced by General Burgoyne to be the finest regiment in the 
world, and who was the hero of the brilliant victory >by American arms 
at the battle of the Cowpens. The claimed descent from Colonel Morgan 
is, however, erroneous, as that gentleman was not born until 1736, while 
Mr. Bowles was born at Boston in 1761. He served throughout the 
revolutionary war as a soldier in the American army. A few years 
after the war, all uneducated, and incapable of debating or expounding 
doctrine, but wonderfully familiar with the Bible, fervent in faith, and 
moving in exhortation and in prayer, he became a Free Will Baptist 
exhorter, and then an elder. For more than thirty years his field of 



298 History of Franklin County 

work was in Vermont, and in 1835 was induced by his son, a Congre- 
gational clergyman, to remove to Northern New York. His first work 
in this section, apart from stirring religious life among the woodsmen 
with whom he came in contact on his way, was in Dickinson. Then he 
preached in Moira, in Hopkinton, in Lawrence, in Malone, and in Con- 
stable — in school houses, in homes, in groves — wherever he could 
gather an audience. He was full six feet in height, had a deep, heavy 
voice, and possessed a good deal of magnetism as a speaker. He became 
blind, or nearly so. His last days were passed in Malone with a Mr. 
Fuller, in the northern part of the town, where he died in 1843. He 
is buried in Constable. 

The Mormons began a proselyting campaign in Dickinson in 1843. 
Joseph Smith, to whom the Book of Mormon was revealed, and Apostle 
Joseph Meacham were relatives of the Dickinson Meachams, and it was 
doubtless this relationship that directed the movement to this locality. 
The Mormon meetings were held in the old red school house on the road 
leading from Nicholville to Dickinson Center, and occasioned a good 
deal of criticism and excitement. A number of converts were made 
both among Dickinson and Hopkinton people, and these were per- 
suaded to journey in ox carts from the locality to Nauvoo, 111., which 
was then the Mormon headquarters. The glamour soon wore off with 
most of the proselytes, however, and many would have returned gladly 
if they could. Eeport has it that the hierarchy was not disposed to 
object seriously to the withdrawal of men, but that it held to the women 
with an iron grip. One man is said to have attempted to steal away 
with his family, and to have been shot. Samuel Meacham did return, 
but came alone, and always thereafter was a desolate and broken man, 
mourning for the family that remained at Nauvoo. 

Definite information relative to the organization of the Baptist church 
at Alburgh is unobtainable, as the records of the society can not be 
located. The proceedings of the St. Lawrence Baptist Association for 
1848 show that it was in existence in that year, but without giving any 
particulars regarding it. In 1853 these proceedings credit it with 
twenty-nine members, and from this time until 1865 it appears to have 
had a pastor with the exception of three years, though sometimes in 
conjunction with Nicholville. Its own report to the association in 
1857 declares itself a small, weak body, and the largest membership it 
ever listed was thirty-five in 1864, from which time until it was dropped 
from the association in 1873 it never had a pastor except in 1868. In 
1877 the association advised that it become a branch of the Lawrence- 



Dickinson 299 

ville church, or that its members individually unite with that society, 
sell its church edifice and give the proceeds to Burke. In 1878 it 
reported that it was ready to deed its church building to Lawrence- 
ville, but so far as the records in the county clerk's office show the 
transfer was never made. The church was built or begun in 1860. 
Local understanding is that all of the people of the district, regardless 
of denominational associations, were contributors to the fund, and the 
present impression of most of them is that the building was to be for 
union services. The title, however, is in the Baptist organization. 

In the cemetery across the road is a grave at which stands a tomb- 
stone inscribed with the name of Peter Demo, January 16, 1859, as the 
date of his death and 112 years his age. An old resident who remem- 
bers Demo well tells me that he lived in Dickinson a number of years, 
and that it was known to a certainty that he was at least as old as 
the stone represents, and was confidently believed to be older. He 
claimed to have been a soldier in Montcalm's command when Wolfe 
wrested Quebec from the French in 1759, and afterward a trapper for 
the Hudson Bay Company. Doubtless it was upon the reckoning that 
he could not have served as a soldier at an earlier age than twelve years 
that belief in his having been at least 112 years old was predicated. 

The first recognition of Dickinson in the Methodist conference 
records was in 1851, when it was made a mission, and Rev. J. Delarme 
assigned to it. It is presumable, however, that the place had earlier, 
though probably infrequent, Methodist ministration, as Parishville had 
been the center of a circuit at least a quarter of a century before, and 
"riders" from there had doubtless covered this territory. Potsdam is 
understood to have been the parent charge. After Dickinson's organiza- 
tion as a mission it was at times subsidiary to Nicholville. Later it 
was joined for a time with Duane, the two constituting a single parish, 
and in 1887 St. Regis Falls was annexed. The church building at 
Dickinson Center was erected in 1872, services having been held prior 
to that date in the homes of members, at school houses and at the town 
house. Even before Dickinson was made a mission the St. Lawrence 
French mission had been created by the conference (in 1849), and was 
continued for nearly twenty years. This mission had stations at a 
number of points in Franklin and St. Lawrence counties, the move- 
ment having been designed with the intent of attracting people of 
French nativity in this section to the Methodist denomination. The 
headquarters of the mission for both counties was a short distance 
south of Alburgh, where there was a considerable French Protestant 



300 History of Franklin County 

population, and where a chapel was built in 1854 at a cost of four 
hundred dollars. Who served at this chapel first I have failed to learn, 
but Rev. James Delarme (located at Nicholville) was assigned to it in 
1851, and Rev. Michael Taylor followed in 1854. Then Rev. A. Leclair 
was in charge for eight years. Rev. Allen Miller, Rev. Mr. Shaw and 
Rev. A. F. Bigelow also preached there. The chapel was finally sold 
and converted into a dwelling house. As such it is still in existence. 

A Seventh Day Adventist church at the Center was incorporated in 
1895, and a church edifice erected. The movement originated in a 
visit to the place by propagandists of the faith, who held a series of 
tent meetings, and aroused an interest which continued for a few years ; 
but gradually the membership fell away, the society ceased to be active, 
and the building and lot were sold for five hundred dollars. 

There are no civic or other organizations in Dickinson with the excep- 
tion of Adirondack Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, ~No. 1,019, which 
has a membership of one hundred and twelve, and owns its lodge room, 
which was formerly the Seventh Day Adventist church. 

Formerly there was a Grand Army post, named in honor of Daniel 
Robbins, who was the Methodist Episcopal pastor at Dickinson Center 
at the time the 142d regiment was recruited. He enlisted in that com- 
mand, and died in the service. The post was organized in 1886, but 
surrendered its charter in 1908, when there remained in the town but 
few veterans, the large majority having responded to the last roll call 
for final " muster out." The highest number of members that the post 
ever had was forty-two, and of these only four are now living. H. G. 
Waste is the sole survivor of the charter members. The original officers 
were: Commander, R. P. Lindsay; S. V. Com., Luther Maxam; J. V. 
Com., Lyndon Young; Officer of the Day, E. E. Bates; Adjutant, S. W. 
Gleason ; Quartermaster, William N. Tuttle ; Surgeon, William Morrill. 



CHAPTER XIV 
DUANE 

Duane was formed from M alone January 24, 1828, the first settle- 
ment in the town having been made about 1824 by men employed by 
James Duane, from whom the town takes its name. It then included 
Brighton and three townships of Harrietstown. 

Mr. Duane was of distinguished ancestry, his grandfather having 
been the first mayor of the city of New York, a State Senator, member 
of the Council of Appointment, and for several years a judge of the 
United States court. He was the founder of Duanesburgh, Schenec- 
tady county. Our Mr. Duane married Harriet, daughter of William 
Constable of New York, who was one of the large land owners in 
Franklin county in the apportionment of the Macomb purchase, and 
also a ship owner and importing merchant. For his day he possessed 
great wealth. His ships sailed to all parts of the world, and when he 
or members of his family desired to voyage to Europe he was accus- 
tomed to fit up one of his own vessels, and employ it much as the 
modern millionaire uses his yacht. Mr. Constable came to this coun- 
try from London, England, where he had a fine establishment in the 
aristocratic residential district. It is told of him that upon the occasion 
of a visit to that city, after he had become a resident of New York, he 
was met in the street by Benedict Arnold, who greeted him with 
extended hand. Mr. Constable refused to see the band or in any way 
to respond to the salutation. Notwithstanding the immense land hold- 
ings of Mr. Constable here, he never visited the county. After his 
death, however, a brother journeyed twice through our northern towns, 
inspecting the Constable properties, examining into the methods 
employed by the local agents, and in some cases dealing directly with 
those who held lands under contract. 

A part of Mr. Constable's holdings, amounting to 34,589 acres in 
township No. 12, and to 10,000 acres in No. 9, had become the property 
of Mrs. Duane by inheritance, and at about the time that the wolf 
bounty frauds were rife, burdening non-resident land owners so sorely, 
Mr. Duane came to this county to make it his home. His motive, in 
large part, was to do what he could to stamp out the business. " Judges, 
church members, respectable neighbors, all were in it, and winked at 

[301] 



302 History of Franklin County 

enormous sums being spent, which all came out of the non-resident tax- 
payers." Mr. Duane arrived in Malone with his family in 1824, and 
located in that village until he could make a road thence to his own 
lands and build there. His operations were on a tremendous scale for 
that clay, and, with the exception of a single instance, never since 
has Duane enjoyed an equal activity and prosperity. Possessed of 
means of his own, and backed by the wealth of his father, he under- 
took a development which involved the employment of considerable 
help, the establishment of several industries, and a heavy expenditure. 
A part of his help he brought with him from Schenectady county, and 
others were attracted from other points in this locality by the oppor- 
tunity to obtain employment and to purchase lands at low prices, with 
the privilege of paying for them in labor. A brick kiln was built just 
north of the foot of Studley Hill, and operated by a Mr. Studley (from 
whom the hill takes its name), a saw mill was constructed on the Duane 
stream for getting out the lumber needed in building, a farm of three 
hundred acres was cleared and brought into the highest state of cultiva- 
tion, engineers were employed for three years to locate deposits of iron, 
a forge was erected on the Duane stream just below where it is crossed 
by the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, and later, after Mr. Duane 
had been joined by his brothers, Eobert and Mumford, a furnace was 
established on Deer river, and operated for six or seven years. Its 
product averaged about one hundred tons a year of the very finest 
quality of iron. But the expense of marketing the output was so great 
that operations were prosecuted at a loss. The Duane residence, since 
burned, was one of the best for its time in the county, and there were 
two fine gardens of two acres each, which are now all grown up to weeds 
and briars. The farm, too, is neglected and apparently abandoned, no 
member of the family remains in the town, and only traces of the 
Duane works are to be seen. 

In another chapter Mrs. Lowell, a daughter of Mr. Duane, who died 
at Schenectady in 1890, is quoted at considerable length, and additional 
extracts from her charming pamphlet, " Becollections of an Old-Fash- 
ioned Lady," are here given : "A good many families, some from the 
neighborhood and some that father had brought with him from Duanes- 
burgh, had moved in, made little clearings, and built log houses while 
he was getting ready to build. They must have lived chiefly on the wages 
he paid them, or the money advanced, until they began to raise crops, 
for only people who are not very well off settle on new land. There 
were so many families that, although most of them were young people 
and their children yet babies, by the time that mother got there (1827) 



Duane 303 

she had forty children in her Sunday school. [The population of Duane 
in 1830 was 247 and in 1840 it was 324, or more than it has ever been 
since except in two decades, one of which was during the Schroeder 
activity.] * * * As the country opened, and the roads improved, 
to her great delight, mother often had her house filled with company. 
She proved the truth of the old adage, ' Where there is heart-room there 
is house-room,' by poking us into crannies, and perhaps accommodate 
a party of six or eight who might unexpectedly arrive after ten o'clock 
at night. * * * Such quantities of food had to be cooked for the 
men ! Beside seven or eight who were clearing the farm, a squad were 
working in an ore-bed and living in a shanty. Their bread had to be 
baked in the house, they doing the rest of the cooking themselves; 
upsetting all the economy of the kitchen utensils by their demands. One 
time our women not only baked for our large household, but for a gang 
of men at the forge and for another who were cutting down trees where 
Uncles Eobert and Mumford were about to build the furnace. I )ur great 
brick oven, which would hold fifteen large loaves, was heated every day 
but Sunday, and twice on Saturday. * * * The land unfor- 
tunately abounded in iron ore. Ore-bed after ore-bed was discovered, 
worked, and given up. * * * A great deal w r as spent to make the 
mineral wealth productive. At last (in 1828) they did get fine beds 
opened. Father built a forge, made bar iron which sold excellently at 
the Clinton rolling mills; the good time looked to-be coming. Just 
then came the freshet which destroyed so many lives and so much prop- 
erty in Vermont and Northern New York, and carried off the forge. 
The little stream which one could step over on stones, except where it 
was dammed, was so swollen that the whole ravine it ran through was 
filled like a deep river. * * * He built another forge ; it was 
burned ; another ; it was carried off by another freshet. * * * 
Uncle Eobert, with Uncle Mumford, put up a large blast furnace at 
Deer river, about five miles from our house ; their works looked like 
a village. The great furnace, the stone bellows-bouse, the blacksmith 
shop, the three coal houses filled with charcoal burnt in the neighbor- 
hood, their own house and two barns, a frame tavern which they built 
and rented to a man who could board some of the people they employed 
who would not mess with the men. It was a wonderful treat to go over 
and see the casting at the furnace ; men carrying great round ladles, red- 
hot, filled with melted iron, to pour into the molds. In the long run 
neither they nor poor father made by their manufactories. But they 
spent more of dear grandpa's money than the lands had ever beer valued 
at upon it. * * * 



304 History of Franklin County 

"Father and mother were practically parson and doctor to the settle- 
ment. Each had a medicine chest, stocked, and they also had two 
doctor-books — ' Thompson's Domestic Medicine ' and i The Family 
Physician.' When the people were sick they used to consult father and 
mother, who would look out the case in the book, and weigh out what 
they supposed to be the right medicine. They always furnished every 
comfort in their power, so that it was looked upon as a right for any 
to send for medicine, tea, white bread and currant jelly, or for father 
to come and bleed them. * * * 

" The way father came to build the pretty little school house, looking 
so much like a church (which you remember, but which is gone now) 
was this : The people had to hold their first town meeting in a log 
school house ; he saw that it was lowering to their self respect as a com- 
munity, and himself put up a neat frame building which could be used 
as a school house, town house and church. Most of the elder heads 
of families were members of the Congregational Church. On Sundays 
they used to hold their meetings in the morning in this way: One 
brother made a prayer ; then Deacon Esterbrooks gave out one of Watts's 
hymns. * * * They had another hymn ; another prayer ; no Bible, 
but a sermon read. After this service came intermission. The women 
sat eating their lunch on the benches by the wall. Mother had her forty 
Sunday scholars on planks rested on benches, so as to form a triangle 
'round her chair. Soon, the men, who had adjourned to the fields if it 
were pleasant, or the shed if it stormed, began to come in and listen too. 
Sunday school and recess over, father read the Church service, the 
people all responding, and liking it very much. These were the first 
[Episcopal] church services held in any of our northern counties. Miss 
Harison well said when St. Mark's, Malone, was hung in black at his 
death, t It was just, for he introduced the church into the county.' " 

Mr. and Mrs. Duane were devoted members of the Episcopal Church. 
Mrs. Lowell says : "About three years after we moved up to Duane a 
church was organized in Plattsburgh ; a young deacon, Eev. Anson B. 
Hard, put in charge. He came out to Malone and held, in the court 
house, the first [Episcopal] church service, except the lay readings, 
ever held in Franklin county. The roads were still very rough ; there 
had been heavy rains ; the children all had the whooping cough ; noth- 
ing stood in the way. Father took us all — mother, the nurse and 
four children — in a lumber wagon to the village. The water in holes 
in the road was so deep that several times it went over the sides of the 
wagon. We were five hours going fourteen miles. * * * A few 



Duane 305 

church people had moved into Malone; a few were attracted by the 
services; and before long there were occasional visits from missionaries, 
when we always went down — sometimes getting up before light to be 
in time. * * * 

"It might seem strange, when the household was conducted on so 
large and munificent a scale, there should have been such a lack of 
money. The master and mistress allowed themselves few personal indul- 
gences, and found it difficult to scrape enough together to send a boy 
to school. It was that everything was raised on the farm except a 
supply of groceries and dry goods from the stores in Malone, in a man- 
ner I shall describe by-and-by. The farm was three hundred acres in 
the highest state of cultivation. It is understood by persons settling 
townships of wild land that farms half paid for, with the remainder 
under contract (that is, mortgaged to the seller, with interest to be paid) 
are worth more than those not sold at all. This great farm was worked 
by laborers paying for the first half of their farms in Number Nine by 
work. There was so little money going in that part of the country in 
those days that ' store pay ' was the regular remuneration ; cash, the 
exception. Farmers who owed interest on their land, or who wanted 
to make a payment on the second half, never brought money. They 
' turned in' cattle, butter, grain, or whatever they had, to the country 
merchants, and gave due bills. The merchants took the cattle to Shore- 
ham, the butter to St. Albans, and so got the money to pay the city 
dealers who supplied them. Goods were bought on six months' credit, 
and had to be turned two or three times before money could be got for 
them. So that this large farm, where everything was brought to perfec- 
tion and carried on on so large a scale, was managed without our seeing 
any money. We always had from four to five men in the winter, and from 
six to twelve in the summer ; in haying I have counted seventeen. We 
killed our own beeves and mutton, cured our own pork ; father saw to the 
hams himself, and we had everything of the very best. * * * 
There was no market for anything. They did not know how to sell if 
there had been. Consequently we had a supply, as free as water, of 
things that are stinted by money-value elsewhere. Of cauliflowers, 
asparagus, sweet corn and the like there were more than could be eaten 
in parlor and kitchen." 

Besides the Duane activities already noted, the town had at one time 
a grist mill on the Duane stream, and John Smith operated a "leather 
factory" in 1834. Among other hides and peltries, catamount skins 
were tanned there. The bark mill used by Mr. Smith was afterward 



306 History of Franklin County 

brought to Malone, and became a part of the Lincoln tannery. Near 
this point, too, as well as at the furnace, Major Duane erected a board- 
ing house for the employees in the mine and at the forge, which was 
run also as a hotel eighty years or more ago. 

Mr. Duane served his town for many years as supervisor, and became 
an officer in the militia, ranking as major. He died in 1859. 

The eldest son of Major Duane (James Chatham) was a West Point 
graduate, and during the war of the rebellion served with distinction 
as an engineer in the army of the Potomac. He built the pontoon bridge 
for General McClellan across the Chickahominy, which was the longest 
bridge of that kind ever constructed up to that time, and was in charge 
of many other military engineering works. He rose to the rank of 
brigadier-general. After the close of the war he was for a number of 
years the head of the United States lighthouse board, and then became 
a member of New York city's aqueduct commission which planned the 
system of works for supplying the metropolis with water from the 
Catskills. 

Stephen Kempton operated a saw mill on the Duane stream in later 
years, which Isaac Chesley afterward owned and worked, and still later 
a Mr. Walker ran a steam mill near the same point for a year or two. 
Oren Grimes (who had been manager for the lumbering interests at 
St. Eegis Falls) and his son-in-law, Fred O'Neil (afterward county 
treasurer for six years, and then postmaster at Malone for » seventeen 
years) began lumbering in 1875 on Deer river, near where the Duane 
furnace had been, and continued in the business for about twelve years, 
when they sold to Ladd & Smallman of Malone, who sold to Nelson 
Trushaw and Peter King. The latter were burned out in 1892. George 
McNeil had preceded Grimes & O'Neil in lumbering here, and had an 
English gate mill and tub factory. Francis Skiff was there even before 
McNeil. Grimes & O'Neil rebuilt the mill, and apparently the frame 
tavern which Mrs. Lowell refers to as having been rented to a man who 
was to board such of the furnace operatives as would not mess with the 
common hands was run as a public house also; for there was then a 
good deal of travel past the place on the Hopkinton and Port Kent turn- 
pike. I am told that when the house was closed in the Duane period 
the key was simply turned in the door, and furniture, bedding and 
clothing left in it to mould and decay. The tavern became the Grimes 
homestead. It was bought years later by E. P. Perkins, who tore it 
down, and now even the spot where it stood can hardly be located. Still 
another mill was built near the headwaters of Deer river by Fenderson 



Duane 307 

& Ford in 1891 and another in 1905 by Conger Bros, of Brushton at 
Lake Duane. The latter burned in 1907 with a loss of $7,500. 

During the time that Grimes & O'Neil lumbered here John Duane, 
a son of the major, tore down the old furnace building in order to get 
the iron in it to sell. The structure was of stone, as high as an ordinary 
three-story building, and the walls were reinforced by great bars of 
iron two or three inches wide and thirty to forty feet long. Of course 
the building served no purpose standing idle, and yet it seems too bad 
that it should have been dismantled and destroyed. The foundation 
walls of some parts of the works are still visible. 

Apart from the Duane enterprises, the town had no industrial 
history of moment until about 1883, when Eobert Schroeder of New 
York, who bought hops in Franklin county for a number of years, 
determined to become a grower himself on an extensive scale, and pur- 
chased more than two thousand one hundred acres of farm and forest 
lands on the plateau which comprises substantially all of the arable 
land in the town, paying fancy prices for most of it as measured by 
the valuations which had theretofore been prevalent, or by those which 
now obtain. He erected large and expensive hop houses; set out sev- 
eral hundred acres to hops; bought barn fertilizer in New York city, 
freighted it to Malone, and then hauled it fifteen to eighteen miles by 
team to the yards. Everything was done with a lavish disregard for 
expense, and there were no profits. The yield per acre was light, the 
price of hops fell to a point below the cost even of economical produc- 
tion, and after a time yard after yard was abandoned until none 
remained in cultivation. Of his forest land Mr. Schroeder made a pri- 
vate park, and built a fine cottage on the shore of a handsome sheet of 
water known as Debar pond. He was then a bachelor, and with a gen- 
tleman employee and friend as companion spent a good deal of his time 
in the summer months at this point. Male guests from New York city 
were present frequently, and upon such occasions the fun was reported 
to have been fast and "loud/ 5 These affairs were expensive, too, for 
items of wine and broken china, and the upkeep of the cottage could 
hardly have been less than that of the farms. The cottage was once 
burned, but was rebuilt even finer than before. Mr. Schroeder at length 
failed, and the entire property was sold at a great shrinkage in price 
as compared with cost. Mr. Schroeder returned to New York city to 
reside, and committed suicide there a few years ago. 

In the old days Duane had two hotels besides the Duane establish- 
ments for the accommodation of stage travelers and the few sportsmen 



308 History of Franklin County 

who sought the locality for hunting and fishing. One was kept by 
Hiram Ayers, and the other by Ezekiel Ladd, who built it in 1839, and 
who was succeeded by Jabez Hazen, Henry Woodford, James Bean and 
Eobert Ladd. The building was burned in 1890 and rebuilt by Eobert 
Ladd. This latter hotel is now the town house. Later William J. Ayers 
had a summer hotel that was famous for the excellence of its table, and 
which, until it was burned, enjoyed a considerable patronage, and 
George Selkirk now conducts a modest establishment for summer board- 
ers and sportsmen in the western part of the town. Lake Meacham was 
long one of the best trout waters and deer hunting localities in the 
Adirondacks, and still gives good sport in these regards. Before the 
civil war "Aunt Mary" Wine lived there in a cabin, and cared for 
chance visitors in a crude but hospitable way. Then a little better house, 
kept by John Titus for several years, and afterward by Henry Wood- 
ford, began to attract custom, and in 1872 was purchased by Isaac 
Chesley and Alonzo B. Fuller, by whom it was enlarged and improved. 
Mr. Chesley retired from the partnership after a year or two, after 
which Mr. Fuller conducted the hotel alone for perhaps twenty years. 
Something like eighteen years ago the house burned, and was wholly 
rebuilt on modern lines. Shortly afterward the place changed hands, 
and is at present managed by A. H. Mould for the owners. Mr. Fuller 
was a gentleman of exceptional intelligence, with the tastes of the nat- 
uralist abundantly developed. He was one of the first men m the 
country to demonstrate the practicability of artificial propagation of 
fish, and was an authority on everything pertaining to the forests. His 
ability and attainments were recognized by the most eminent scientists, 
and for years he was in correspondence with Agassiz and other men of 
like standing, who sought his views and statement of his experiments 
and knowledge. Mr. Fuller's influence in the community was a force 
for good in every respect, and through his teachings and agency in 
various forms, and also through association with his guests, the people 
of the town gained remarkably in material welfare, general appearance, 
intelligence and morality. Mr. Fuller removed to Malone, where he 
conducted a jewelry store and " clock hospital " until his death in 1912. 
Though until a recent period without a house built expressly for 
purposes of worship, Duane had religious services from earliest times. 
It has already been seen how these were arranged and conducted under 
the distinctively Duane influence, with occasional visitations by 
Episcopalian deacons or clergy, with regular lay readings by Major 
Duane himself, and with Congregational worship under home leadership. 



Duane 309 

Only a few years later the indefatigable Methodist Episcopal circuit 
riders, or pastors from adjacent towns, carried their ministrations here, 
even if somewhat irregularly, and, with a persistence not manifested by 
any other denomination, held to the field until it became their own 
exclusively. Duane was between two Methodist charges or stations. 
Saranac mission in the Troy conference, and M alone in the Black river 
(now Northern New York) conference; and it was visited sometimes 
by the preacher of one and sometimes by that of the other, besides 
being served from time to time by local preachers residing within its 
own territory. Such services were held generally in the " pretty little 
school house looking so much like a church " that was built by Major 
Duane. In 1836 Bev. Jehiel Austin, appointed to Saranac mission, and 
who made Merrillsville his home, extended his work to Duane, and 
formed a class there. Several families united with the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church at about this time, and the work prospered for about two 
years, when business disturbances and reverses occasioned a number of 
removals from the town, and the work languished. But John Adams, 
a local preacher or exhorter, who lived on the place afterward owned 
by "William Steenberge, officiated at services from time to time between 
1839 and 1844, and in the latter year a Mr. Parish, then stationed at 
Merrillsville, preached in Duane also. It was in 1849 that Methodism 
was permanently organized in Duane, Bev. Ebenezer Arnold, stationed 
at Malone, forming a class there, and having a regular week-day appoint- 
ment in the town, the meetings being held at the residence of Hiram 
Ayers, who was the class leader. The other members were Mrs. Bigelow 
Ayers, Thurza Ayers, Joseph Sheffield, Sr., and wife, William Ester- 
brooks and a Mr. Bobbins. A Sunday school also was formed during 
the period with Thurza Ayers as superintendent. In the same year Bev. 
Alonzo Wells, then of Bangor, supplied the appointments both at Duane 
and Chasm Falls, the work at these points having been linked together 
almost from earliest times. In 1850, through the efforts of Rev. Mr. 
Arnold and Presiding Elder Isaac L. Hunt, South Malone and Duane 
were set apart from the Malone circuit, attached to the Chateaugay cir- 
cuit, and called the Duane mission. Bev. B. F. Brown became pastor 
and Bev. Mr. Wells junior pastor — this arrangement continuing until 
1852, except that Bev. William Chase succeeded Mr. Wells. In 1852 tin- 
connection between these missions and Chateaugay was severed, and they 
were united with Dickinson, under the ministration of Bev. Allen Miller. 
In 1854 Bev. Chas. M. Bowen became pastor, and in 1853-9 the charge 
was supplied by Bev. Mr. Bowen. Rev. Mr. Northrop, Bev. Samuel Salis- 
bury, and Bev. Mr. Castle. The list of succeeding pastors appears in 



310 History of Franklin County 

the appendix. The church edifice was erected in 1884 during the pas- 
torate of Eev. J. R. Kay, and in this same period the name of the charge 
was changed to Chasm Falls. Within the past few years a marked 
revival of interest and increase in membership have been witnessed. 

Duane is as distinctively a rural town as can be found in the State. 
It has no manufactories, no railway, and practically no business aside 
from that of its summer hotels and one or two saw mills. It has one 
post-office, one telephone and one telegraph office. In 1847 and again in 
1858 it sought to have the south half of township Number Nine taken 
from Malone and joined to itself, but failed. 

Though he was not a resident of the town, Thomas Meacham hunted 
and fished there so much that he deserves mention here. Meacham Lake 
was named by him, and his obituary stated that during his life he had 
killed 77 panther, 214 wolves, 210 bears and 2,550 deer. He died at 
Hopkinton in May, 1849. 



CHAPTER XV 
FORT COVINGTON 

Fort Covington was erected as a town from Constable February 28, 
1817, and included what is now Bombay. The mile square comprising 
the village of the same name and something over seven thousand acres 
contiguous on the west had been a part of the St. Eegis Indian reserva- 
tion, but were ceded to the State, a part in 1816, and the remainder two 
years later. The consideration paid to the Indians therefor was an 
annuity of fifteen hundred dollars forever — ■ equivalent to twenty-five 
thousand dollars capitalized at six per cent. After this cession most of 
the tract was patented by the State to settlers who had previously held 
the lands under leases from the Indians at a rental of ten cents per 
acre per year, though two parcels were reserved by the State for military 
purposes. One of these, bordering on the right bank of the Salmon 
river, contains about forty-six acres exclusive of the highway, and was 
leased by the State in 1845 to John Moore at a rental of twelve dollars 
per year, subject to surrender of the premises whenever the State 
should require. Moore subsequently assigned the lease, and the plot 
has since been occupied under similar assignments by a number of 
parties. It is at present in the possession of F. J. Dimond, William G. 
Kelsey, the Alex. Smallman estate, the Salmon River Yacht Club, and 
others. The like reservation on the left bank of the river is under 
lease to Mrs. Albert Nevin, and comprises about fourteen acres. The 
rental for this parcel is five or six dollars. Both leases being terminable 
at any time at the pleasure of the State, the lessees naturally do not 
care to undertake costly improvements, and it would seem as if it were 
for the best interest alike of the State and of Fort Covington that the 
policy of holding the lands for possible fortification and military occu- 
pation be abandoned, and the plots sold outright to the highest bidder, 
for there is not the slightest likelihood that either of them will ever be 
fortified or be used for military purposes. For a time following the 
act of reservation it was proposed now and again to erect defensive 
works there, but the proposition never went further. 

Fort Covington is the oldest town in the county in point of settle- 
ment by the whites with the exception of Burke and Chateaugay, and 

[311] 



312 History of Franklin County 

if we count William Gray a white it antedates even these. Gray was a 
revolutionary soldier at the age of seventeen years, his home having 
been in Washington county, and was captured by the British near 
Whitehall. Held as a prisoner at Quebec until the close of the war, he 
located at Caughnawaga, and then at St. Eegis. In everything but 
birth he was more Indian than white. In 1793 the St. Regis chiefs 
leased to him lands now comprising the village of Fort Covington, 
known as the mile square, for two hundred dollars annual rental and 
the promise of the erection of mills there. Three years later this lease 
was assigned by Gray to Thomas Araquente, a St. Regis chief, and car- 
ried with it a saw mill which had been built in the meantime. Toward 
the close of the year 1798 Araquente transferred his holdings to James 
Robertson of Montreal for two thousand four hundred dollars and an 
agreement on Robertson's part to continue payment to the Indians of 
the stipulated rental. Robertson's lease was for a term of nine hun- 
dred and eighty years. Araquente even assumed to include in the 
transfer, besides the mill and mile square, the lands on both sides of 
the Salmon river to its source, but no attempt appears ever to have been 
made to enforce possession or title under this latter conveyance. Three 
brothers of James Robertson also became interested in his investment. 
They erected a grist mill in 1804, which was swept off by a flood in 
1805, and was immediately rebuilt — the cost of the two structures and 
equipment, according to Dr. Hough, having been about seven thousand 
dollars. Robert Buchanan was the builder for the Robertsons, and 
afterward leased and operated the mill for a good many years. He 
died at Fort Covington or Dundee in 1829, and his brother Duncan in 
1825. 

The town includes only a part of township number two and the ceded 
Indian lands, making an aggregate assessed acreage of 22,565. It 
is one of the smallest towns in the county, while in valuation it 
ranks seventh. Ninety years ago its valuation was the same as 
Bangor's, and but little less than that of Chateaugay. Malone's was 
eighty thousand dollars larger, and is now the greater by two millions 
and a half. In the intervening period Bangor's assessment has been 
multiplied by five, Chateaugay's by six, and Malone's by fifteen, while 
Fort Covington's has increased only about fourfold. True, Fort Cov- 
ington has since been partitioned to make Bombay, but in the same 
period Bangor has lost Brandon, a part of Harrietstown, and Santa 
Clara; Chateaugay has been shorn of Bellmont, Burke and Franklin; 
and Malone has had taken from it Duane, Brighton and the richest part 
of Harrietstown. 



Fort Covington 313 

Fort Covington is well watered. The Salmon river flows northwest- 
wardly through the northern and eastern part of the town; the east 
hranch of Deer river traverses almost the entire length of the town on 
the east; the west branch of the same stream crosses the entire south 
part, whence it bends into Bomhay for a short distance, and then, 
swinging easterly, again enters Fort Covington, approximately paral- 
leling the east branch, which it joins just above the point of confluence 
with the Salmon; the Little Salmon flows through the eastern part of 
the Indian cession, and Pike creek through the western section. The 
latter empties into the Salmon below the Canadian border, and the 
Little Salmon about half a mile south of the border. Cushman brook 
flows for about three miles through the eastern part of the town, empty- 
ing into the Salmon a mile above the mouth of Deer river. 

Fort Covington has of course its ridges and valleys, though not so 
markedly as most of the towns to the south, a considerable section 
being as nearly level as any equal body of lands in the north country. 
Its soil is largely clay except in the south portion, and as a whole is 
well adapted to profitable agriculture. Originally it was of course 
densely wooded, and with a larger growth of hard timber than char- 
acterized Constable and Westville. It is one of the few localities in the 
county where oak flourished, a tree that is seldom known on light or grav- 
elly ground. Even now thirty to forty thousand feet of oak are sawed 
there annually. There was also in some parts of the town a good stand 
of pine. Most of the latter went down the river in rafts of lumber and 
ship masts to Montreal or Quebec, as also did the cut from Westville 
and even from as far to the south as Malone. Pine lumber sold in those 
days at five dollars a thousand for common, and at eight dollars for 
clear. A number of the finest farms in the county are in Fort Coving- 
ton, and a particularly large proportion of its farmers have ranked 
high in intelligence, in character and in the degree of success that they 
have attained in their calling, and have been regarded locally as 
authority in methods and as examples to be emulated. Even as long 
ago as 1820 farmers of the town succeeded in winning a noticeable part 
of the premiums given by our first county agricultural society at its 
first fair for cattle and farm products. 

Since there are no town records of date earlier than is 17, nor church 
records until still later, the story of settlement and progress prior to 
the war of 1812 is now practically impossible of definite ascertainment, 
the more so because, early occupancy having been in general under 
leaseholds from the Indians, deed records are also lacking. The part 



314 History of Franklin County 

of the town which is now the village was known until 1817, and even 
later, as French Mills, though why so called it is difficult to under- 
stand except upon the theory that a considerable percentage of the 
early inhabitants were French, for the mills were the enterprise of 
Englishmen and Scotchmen. 

The name which was assumed upon the erection of the town was 
taken in honor of General Leonard Covington, who was mortally 
wounded at the battle of Chrystler's Farm in 1813, and died on a boat 
en route to French Mills. His funeral was held from the house, then a 
hotel, that is now occupied by Frank J. Bucklin, at the west end of the 
lower bridge, and interment was near the residence of the late T. T. 
Kimball, on what has since been known as Covington Hill, not far 
from the block-house. The remains were removed to Sacketts Harbor 
in 1821. The town would have been called simply Covington except 
that a town so named had already been erected in the western part of 
the State ; and hence " Fort " was prefixed. 

When the first settlers other than those connected with the mills 
came, and who they were, is not known with certainty. Dr. Hough's 
history names Samuel Fletcher, Aaron McLean, Ambrose Cushman, 
John Hunsden, David Lynch and Robert, Walter and Duncan Buchanan 
as having located in 1800 or soon thereafter; but the records in the 
county clerk's office do not show any of these except Robert Buchanan 
as having had title to real estate in the township at anything like the 
date stated, though it is known from State records that Mr. Hunsden 
was there in 1803 as clerk of the Indians. He was a physician, and, 
according to the Franklin Telegraph,, died there in 1820. He had been 
a revolutionary soldier, was familiarly known as " captain," and in 
announcing his death the Telegraph said that he " had long been a 
useful and respected inhabitant." He was at one time deputy collector 
of customs. His daughter was the first wife of General S. C. F. Thorn- 
dike of Malone. A map in the Secretary of State's office, made in 1818, 
indicates that he was then the owner of about eight hundred acres of 
land along the Little Salmon river and west of it. By an act of the 
Legislature, passed in 1819, he was to be allowed twelve hundred dollars 
on any purchases of lands that he might make, as compensation for his 
services in inducing the Indians to consent to the cessions of 1816 and 
1818. 

It is also known that at least one of the Robertsons was there as 
early as 1798 ; but in apparent discredit of Dr. Hough's statement of 
early residents is this record in the diary of James Constable, who 



Fort Covington 315 

visited the place in August, 1805 : " Came to the French mills on the 
north side of Salmon river, being an old saw mill, and now not at 
work. There is a very large grist mill completing on the other side, 
the property of a Mr. Eobertson of Montreal, which is the old mill with 
additions. Mr. Buchanan, the superintendent, went through it with 
us. In April, last, the dam was undermined, gave way, and overset the 
then mill, the waters carrying the millstone a great distance. * * * 
The mill is constructed for four run of stones, and the work appears to 
be good. The expense must be considerable, and the iron work is got 
at Judge Bailey's, twenty-five miles distant. There is no village here, 
and no people but those belonging to or working at the mills." (The 
reference to Judge Bailey is important, as establishing that in 1805 
there were iron works at Chateaugay.) But as impeaching Mr. Con- 
stable in part, and to some extent suggesting that there were more 
people at French Mills, or at least in the township, at the date in 
question than he or even Dr. Hough indicates, I give the following 
transcript from the assessment roll for 180G of the town of Malone, of 
which Fort Covington was then a part: 

Personalty. Realty. 

Robert Buchanan $75 $250 

Seth Blanchard 100 175 

Henry Briggs ... 400 

Walter Blanchard • • ... 250 

David and Luther Danforth ... 320 

Silas Cushman ... 220 

Sullivan Ellsworth ... 200 

Thomas Fletcher 15 

Samuel Fletcher ... 312 

Buel Hitchcock 25 

David Lynch 45 57 

Arthur McMillan 30 

David McMillan • 63 

Daniel McLean ... 221 

Ezekiel Paine ... 100 

These all seem to be, and most of them certainly are, Fort Covington 
names, though two or three of them may belong to Wcstville. Unfor- 
tunately the assessment roll from which they are copied does not carry 
any township or lot descriptions. However, an old map on file in the 
county clerk's office locates Mr. Blanchard three or four miles south of 
the village, and his will as recorded in the surrogate's office in 1832 
refers to Seth W. B. Wilson as his grandson, and makes provision for 
his education, though I am informed by a surviving member of the 
family that there was no blood relationship between the two. Mr. 
Blanchard was in 1817 one of the associate judges of the court of 
common pleas, and at the first town meeting was elected a commissioner 



316 History of Franklin County 

of common schools. He was, too, one of the first men to hold the office 
of deputy collector of customs at French Mills. He had a son, Steven, 
who was the father of Justus and Seth. The latter was decidedly a 
" character," effervescing good nature, fond of companionship, and 
dearly loving a joke. His conversation was picturesque in the extreme, 
abounding in wit and quaint expressions, some of which are still quoted 
frequently in the town. By occupation he was a wheelwright, and he 
lost an arm by reason of its having been so badly mangled by a saw as 
to necessitate amputation. 

The map referred to puts Silas Cushman just over the town line in 
Westville, but shows Ambrose abutting on the river, south and east of 
the village. The latter was a soldier in the war of 1812. 

Samuel Fletcher is marked as owning the lot next west of Ambrose 
Cushman. At a later date he was a merchant at West Constable or 
Westville Corners, and eventually removed to St. Lawrence county. 
He was an uncle of Calvin T. Fletcher of Helena, who at one time 
practiced law in Malone, and the great uncle of the late Ernest T. 
Fletcher of Malone. Thomas Fletcher is thought by Stiles Stevens, his 
grandnephew, and exceptionally well informed on points of early local 
history, to have been the man who was shot by the British when they 
raided the town in 1812, though Mr. Briggs remembered the name as 
Frazer. Mr. Stevens is probably correct. 

David and Luther Danforth are on the map at the southeast corner 
of the mile square, at the upper falls, wbere, in company with Guy 
Meigs, they had a gang saw mill, which after Mr. Meigs had withdrawn 
from the partnership they continued to operate until the timber supply 
had been practically exhausted. They also had a carding and fulling 
and woolen mill, which latter they leased in 1836" to Luther Starks and 
Sidney Briggs — Starks subsequently assigning his interest to Daniel 
Eussell and D. S. McMillan. The place is the same that was until 
recently occupied by Thomas Davidson, deceased, with a carding mill, 
and it is worthy of note that, whereas in early times nearly every com- 
munity had such a mill, Mr. Davidson's was in 1917 the only one in 
the entire county. It still contained the machinery for the manufacture 
of cloth. The exact date of the erection of the woolen mill here is 
unknown, but it was probably between 1830 and 1835,* and was the 
second mill of the kind in the county. In a letter written by John H. 
Hatton. and published in 1903, it is stated tbat Luther Danforth had 
three sons, a son-in-law (Thomas Bichey) and a grandson who were 



* Mr. Davidson died in the autumn of 1917, and the mill was then razed. 



Fort Covington 317 

Methodist ministers. Allen Danforth, presumedly a son of David or 
Luther, served as fifer in Captain Tilden's company in the war of 1812 

Sullivan Ellsworth was doubtless a brother of Orange and an uncle 
of Chandler, as a biographical sketch of the latter lists a Sullivan as 
one of the brothers of Orange. The map gives him a number of farms 
in the central and southern parts of the town. Orange Ellsworth must 
have arrived earlier than 1808, as Chandler was born in the town in 
that year. His farm adjoined the home place of Sullivan. Alpheus 
Ellsworth, a brother of Orange, probably came at about the same time 
with the latter. Certainly he was there in 1814, as in that year he 
joined with Orange in taking title to lands which were already in their 
possession, probably under contract. 

David McMillan was the father of Mrs. Ebenezer Stevens, who was 
the first white child born in the town, and also of David Stiles who 
gave the Lawrence, Webster Co. woolen mills in Malone so fine a 
reputation for honest and durable, even if coarse, products, and who 
removing to Wisconsin at about the close of the Civil War, amassed a 
fortune in lumbering, and died there in 1883. A son, B. Frank is an 
almost annual visitor to old friends in Malone and Fort 'Covington and 
is prosperous. Arthur McMillan, a brother of the elder David, was a 
member of Captain Tilden's command at French Mills in the 'war of 
1812. 

Buel H. Hitchcock came in 1802 from Vermont with Albon and 
Alric Man of Westville. He was a physician, and Aretus M., Myron 
H. and Alric (all of whom became prominent in the business life of 
Fort Covington twenty years later or more) were his sons Alric 
removed to Cornwall, Ont. There is still standing, though built over 
a frame -dwelling house that is known as the "Hitchcock house" In 
a paper prepared some years ago by John A. Quaw it is said that this 
building was m existence when James Campbell came in 1808 and 
that it is believed to be the oldest frame structure in the county It 
is now at the south foot of Water street, on the bank of the river and 
it probably was the home of Dr. Hitchcock. Formerly it stood on the 
lot now occupied by the residence of James MacArtnev, some twentv 
rods north of its present location. It was from this house, as told by 
Christopher Briggs and Stiles Stevens, that a man stepped out with a 
gun when the British entered the town in 1812. Particulars regarding 
the affair are not altogether agreed, except as to the fact thai the 
British fired upon him and either wounded or killed him. 

Henry Briggs was in trade at French Mills during tin- war of L812 



318 History of Franklin County 

but afterward returned to Washington county for a time. He came to 
Fort Covington again in 1820, accompanied by his family. Several 
sons of a brother came later, and became well known and substantial 
men in the northern part of the county. Henry was the father of 
Christopher, who was elected county superintendent of the poor in 
1864, lived in Malone for many years, and committed suicide in 1890 by 
stabbing himself in the abdomen. The Briggs family was a large one, 
but I think that the last member of it lately living in this section and 
bearing the name was Levi, a son of Christopher, who made his home 
with his son-in-law, Guy Man, in Westville. 

Concerning Ezekiel Paine or Payne I am able to learn but little. 
He was town clerk of Constable, of which Fort Covington was then a 
part, in 1808, a coroner the same year, one of the incorporators in 1815 
of a literary society known as the French Mills Miscellaneous Library, 
and upon the organization of Fort Covington as a town in 1817 was 
elected one of the inspectors of schools. Samuel H. Payne was an 
ensign in the State militia in 1818, a captain in 1822, and deputy 
customs officer in 1838, at which time he evinced such interest and 
sympathy, if not open activity, in the Papineau cause or Canadian 
rebellion that he was removed from office. The neutrality law then 
made it the duty of customs officers, among others, to aid in enforcing 
that statute, and in particular to seize any arms or munitions or sup- 
plies that were intended for use of insurrectionists against a foreign 
government, so that Mr. Payne was adjudged by the administration to 
have doubly offended, in that, besides having individually violated the 
neutrality law, he had been also negligent and disregardful of the 
obligations of his office for enforcement of it. At that time probably 
nine-tenths of the people in Fort Covington were pronounced partisans 
of the rebels. Whether any of them actually went into Canada, as many 
did at Ogdensburg, to help the rebels fight their battles, I am not 
advised; but fifty or more of the most prominent men in the place 
organized an association to give them aid and comfort by subscription 
of funds and by procuring guns for them. The next year Mr. Payne 
was nominated by his party for the Assembly as a vindication, but was 
defeated by John S. Eldredge of Hogansburgh. In 1838 two militia 
companies in Franklin county were called out for service on the border 
for enforcement of the neutrality law, and at least one of the two was 
stationed at Fort Covington, under the command of a Captain Mont- 
gomery. The troop used the building now known as the Spencer or 
American House for a barracks, and cells of oak plank were built in 



Fort Covington 319 

the cellar for the confinement of men who should be arrested or of 
soldiers guilty of infractions of discipline. The fact that this hotel 
was at one time a military barracks is seemingly well understood in 
Fort Covington, but generally the date is erroneously thought to have 
been during the war of 1812. Though I have been unable to get any 
certain line upon the date of erection of the hotel in question, I am 
confident that it was not then in existence, because there is good 
authority that in 1812-11 there were but two taverns in the place; one 
at the west end of the lower bridge, and the other the building known 
in recent years as the Matthews store. Walter H. Payne was a son of 
Samuel, was district attorney from 1857 to 1860, and was nominated 
as a Breckinridge elector in the latter year, but declined. While unable 
to establish the fact with certainty, I am disposed to believe that 
Samuel was a son of Ezekiel, and Walter a grandson. 

Daniel McLean is thought to have been the father of Allan, and the 
grandfather of the late Mrs. D. J. Stewart and of Mrs. Gilbert A. 
Wright of Malone. 

Of the other pioneers, assuming that all of those whom I have listed 
from the assessment roll were Fort Covington residents, nothing can 
now be learned. 

James Campbell came in 1808, and for a long time was a prominent 
figure in the town and county. He was a mechanic, but if he gave due 
attention to the duties of the many offices which he filled he could not 
have had much time to work at his trade. He was customs inspector 
in 1812; adjutant of the Franklin county regiment the same year; 
assistant United States storekeeper to receive and care for the immense 
quantities of supplies sent from Sacketts Harbor and Plattsburgh for 
General Wilkinson's army while it was quartered at French Mills in 
1813-11; one of the associate judges in 1817; sheriff from 1815 to 
1818; a Presidential elector in 1828; member of Assembly in 1827. 
After the war of 1812 he was an ensign in the State militia, and then 
adjutant again. An advertisement in the Franklin Telegraph shows 
that he was in trade at French Mills in 1821. He died at Cornwall, 
Out., in 1883 at the age of ninety-nine years. 

George B. R. Gove, a man of strong character and driving energy, 
came from New England in 1809, and for many years was one of the 
leading men of the place. He was supervisor seven times between 1823 
and 1840; was elected comity clerk in 1825; was member of Assembly 
in 1824 and again in 1849 : was customs officer 1850-4; and was also a 
commissioner of the United States deposit fund. He had a brickyard 



320 History of Franklin County 

near the village in 1825, and was in the mercantile business in 1828, 
built and operated a grist mill, a mill for grinding plaster, and a saw 
mill on the Little Salmon river, and had an ashery. It was through 
Mr. Gove that the attempted frauds upon the United States treasury 
by David Jones, by the presentation of baseless or raised claims for 
losses and damages in the war of 1812, were exposed. Mr. Gove had an 
honest claim amounting to about six hundred dollars, which Jones had 
multiplied by ten. A communication came to Mr. Gove from Wash- 
ington in regard to it, to which he instantly replied that he had no 
claim for the larger sum, but did have one for the smaller. A thorough 
investigation followed, which exposed the enormity of the Jones opera- 
tions, and disclosed that perjury and false certification had entered 
into them. But between the question whether a Federal or a State 
statute had been violated no successful prosecution could be made. 

Captain James B. Spencer was another early arrival, having come 
from Vermont in 1810. For a man who attained to the prominence 
and possessed the influence which he enjoyed, he must have been most 
unfortunate or thoroughly bad. At one time or another he was accused 
of participation in a number of crimes, viz., passing counterfeit money 
while he lived in Vermont, collusion with Jones, his brother-in-law, in 
the attempted war claims frauds, smuggling and subornation of per- 
jury. But he appears to have lived down all of the charges, and to 
have commanded the respect and confidence of his townsmen and of the 
county generally. He was commissioned a captain in the regular army 
by President Madison in the war of 1812, was afterward agent for the 
St. Regis Indians ; a local magistrate ; deputy collector of customs ; 
twice member of Assembly; surrogate; a Presidential elector in 1832; 
and in 1836 was elected to Congress over Asa Hascall, though he lost 
Franklin county by about two hundred majority, and owed his success 
to St. Lawrence. He died at Fort Covington in 1848. 

The McCrea family was also represented early at Fort Covington, 
but I am unable to learn much about them. The estate of James 
McCrea, Jr., was administered there in 1809, by James McCrea of 
Essex county. John McCrea was a second lieutenant in an artillery 
regiment in 1817, was one of the early deputy collectors of customs, 
and a deputy sheriff in 1823. His home was where Timothy T. Kim- 
ball afterward lived. 

William Ware must also have come early, as his estate was admin- 
istered by his widow in 1809, and Essex county militia officers boarded 
with Mrs. Ware in 1812. Though I have no positive information to 



Fort Covington 321 

that effect, I believe that Preserved Ware, afterward well known and 
prominent in both Fort Covington and Bombay, was a descendant. 

Daniel W. Church, who settled here in 1809, was a surveyor and 
mechanic, and built many of the mills in the northern part of the 
county. He removed to Morristown, and died there. 

Still another estate, administered in 1815, is of interest because of 
the field of conjecture which it suggests. Elihu Spencer, a soldier in 
the United States army, was killed at the battle of Chrystler's Field in 
1813, and upon the petition of his mother, Martha, a brother, Joseph, 
was appointed administrator. The record of proceedings affords no 
further information. Wonder is excited if the administrator named 
was the father of Joseph Spencer, whom so many of us knew as land- 
lord of the old Spencer or American House. The assumption that he 
was is strengthened by the fact that in a later generation there was an 
Elihu Spencer. Still there is probably no record in existence which 
could resolve the question, nor any living person who knows. 

Jonathan Ordway located in 1809 or 1810 on the east branch of 
Deer river, three or four miles southeast from the village, where he had 
large holdings. Besides engaging in farming and lumbering, he was a 
practicing physician. A grandson, Walter S. Ordway, is a merchant in 
Westville. 

Thomas Erwin was here as early as 1813 ; perhaps earlier. He was 
the father of Eev. James Erwin, who was for half a century a Metho- 
dist circuit rider and pastor, and of whose activities extended mention 
is made in the sketches of Chateaugay, Malone and Westville. The 
elder Mr. Erwin was an elder of the Presbyterian church, and a close 
friend of " Father " Brunton, concerning whom more is told in con- 
nection with the history of churches in the town. 

If there were others who were residents prior to the war, the number 
could not have been large, and information about them is not now pro- 
curable. To the war itself the place contributed comparatively few 
soldiers — possibly its close proximity to the border making residents 
there apprehensive that if they should identify themselves openly and 
actively with the American cause their families and property interests 
might suffer more seriously in the event of the place falling into 
British hands. As a matter of fact, French Mills was entered by 
enemy forces but twice during the war: the first time in November, 
1812, for perhaps an hour, and the second in February. 183 I. for per- 
haps two or three days. Except for two oases, at neither time were 
civilians or private property much molested. On the payrolls of the 

11 



322 History of Franklin County 

several Franklin county companies which served during the conflict, on 
file in the adjutant-general's office at Albany, I find only these Fort 
Covington names : James Campbell and Seth Blanchard, sergeants ; 
Alpheus Chapman, Silas Cushman, Arthur McMillan, John S. Payne, 
Allen Danforth, Marcus Harriman, Samuel H. Payne, James B. 
Spencer, Silas Ware, Joseph Spencer, Ezekiel Blanchard, Alpheu3 
Ellsworth (spelled Exworth), and Noble Sexton. The last-named had 
been a soldier in the war of the revolution. 

Fort Covington became an American militan r outpost within a month 
following the declaration of war. a company under Captain Eufus 
Tilden of Moira having occupied it July 8, 1S12, and proceeded at 
once to erect a block house — which, however, was never finished. It 
stood on Covington Hill, but whether rear the site of the Presbyterian 
church, as most residents of the place appear to believe, or farther west, 
at the crest of the hill above Water street, is, I think, an open question. 
Other companies, from the vicinity of Troy, arrived in September, and 
one from Essex county in October. All were under the command of 
Major Guilford Young of Troy, and, with the exception of Captain 
Tilden's, were withdrawn early in November, but not until after they 
had made two expeditions against St. Eegis, the first of which was 
fruitless. On the second they captured the place and a company of 
British soldiers which was in garrison there. Yet another expedition, 
of which I have never seen mention except in a private letter written 
by one of the participants (Lieut. Noble of Essex county), was under- 
taken November 3d. The battalion was ordered out by Major Young 
ostensibly to proceed against plunderers who were alleged to be driv- 
ing off cattle at a point eight or ten miles away. They marched all 
day, a distance of about eighteen miles, for eleven of which they 
floundered through two swamps, when some of the officers revolted 
because no plunderers had been found and because they had become 
satisfied that the major was in reality leading them to an attack upon 
a superior force near Montreal. They returned with their forces to 
French Mills — their commands being militia organizations, and 
therefore not subject to service beyond the confines of their own 
country. Hardly had the Troy and Essex county companies been 
withdrawn from French Mills when Captain Tilden and his men, 
numbering forty-odd, were captured by a larger force of British, 
Canadians and Indians, who remained hardly an hour. The post was 
occupied soon thereafter by companies from Columbia county, which 
remained until March, 1813, and then by the company of Captain 



Fort Covington 323 

David Erwin of Constable, who continued in charge until the arrival 
of General Wilkinson's army in November of the same year. The year 
following Captain Tilden's capture was without notable incident locally. 
The story of General Wilkinson's stay is recited in considerable detail 
in another chapter, and need not be repeated. Hospital Surgeon James 
Mann, from Massachusetts, says that at this date the vicinity of French 
Mills was a wilderness, and letters written by members of Major 
Young's command, a year earlier, complained bitterly that, though the 
officers were able to find accommodations of a sort in the homes of 
residents, the body of privates had to live in tents and huts, with 
altogether inadequate protection from the cold. The many sick 
soldiers in General Wilkinson's army had mostly to be transferred to 
Malone, though local tradition is to the effect that a house opposite the 
American Hotel was converted to hospital uses. But even if every 
habitation in the place had been so taken, no great number could have 
been accommodated, as a map of date 1818 shows only thirty buildings 
in all, including mills, in the mile square. The army remained until 
February, 1814, a part camping on Covington Hill, near the block 
house, and others on a site on the west side of the river, about a quarter 
of a mile south of Chateaugay street. Both positions are believed by 
present residents to have been fortified, and there is an impression on 
the part of some that the military reservation adjacent to Canada on 
the east side of the river also had defensive works. But apparently 
more intelligent examination of this latter locality resolves what had 
been deemed a fortification into a reservoir for supplying water to a 
distillery just across the border. Pipe logs leading to the place from 
the mill pond have been cut at a number of points. The army here 
was under the immediate command of General Jacob Brown of Jeffer- 
son county, General Wilkinson having transferred his headquarters to 
Malone. When General Brown's command was withdrawn and departed 
for Sacketts Harbor in February, 1814, the block house is said to have 
been burned and the barges which had brought the force from Sacketts 
Harbor scuttled and burned down to the ice. Of the truth of the latter 
representation there is no doubt whatever, as the wrecks of the boats 
are still to be found at the river bottom, but the block house is claimed 
by some to have continued to stand for a good many years. Upon 
evacuation by General Brown the British marched in. February 19, 
1814, and seized such stores as were to be found. 

The presence of an army in a community, its individual units freed 
from the restraints of home, and prompted often in periods of camp 



324 History of Franklin 'County 

idleness to excesses and immoral acts, is always demoralizing to the 
citizenry, and French Mills undoubtedly suffered in this regard, though 
it is doubtful if it had ever been a particularly godly place, as it is 
stated in a biography of Bev. Nathaniel Colver that in 1820 there was 
not a " praying man " in the town. It is altogether probable that 
business throve when the soldiers were paid, as their scant and miser- 
ably poor rations disposed them to buy supplies locally whenever they 
were in funds. But after the departure of the troops a sharp reaction 
was experienced, and for years a tremendous scarcity of money pre- 
vailed. Christopher Briggs told the writer thirty-odd years ago that 
when he arrived in Fort Covington in 1820 the place had not recovered 
from the effects of the war. Only from Judge Campbell or Allen 
Lincoln could cash be had, and even as late as 1827, when Mr. Briggs 
engaged in trade, he did not handle a hundred dollars in money in an 
entire year's business ! Confirmatory of Mr. Briggs's story of hard 
times, I find in the advertising columns of the Franklin Telegraph in 
1821 no less than seven notices of sheriff's sales of the property of 
prominent Fort Covington men, viz. : Ambrose Cushman, Benjamin 
and Samuel Sanborn, John Drum, Samuel and Jonathan Bich, and 
James McLean. 

From the year 1820 we are on surer ground, with more exact and 
more accurate data, though trustworthy particulars on some points are 
still unobtainable. According to Mr. Briggs, there were then about 
thirty-five dwelling houses in the hamlet, and only one store, kept by 
John Aiken. The manufacturing establishments included a carding 
mill, a tannery, a grist mill, a cabinet shop, and a trip-hammer works, 
which made scythes and nails. The map of 1818 in the Secretary of 
State's office shows the carding mill, marked as a " cloth iery," on the 
east side of the river, the (Herrick) "bark mill," just above it, the 
trip-hammer works at about the place where Courtney's carriage shop 
now stands, and the grist mill on the west side, close up to the dam. 
The trip-hammer works and nail factory were operated b}^ Jesse Wood- 
bury, Jr., from Washington county. There were several stores at 
Dundee in Canada. It was almost impossible at that time to haul goods 
from Plattsburgh on account of poor roads, and pretty much every- 
thing that the people required from merchants came from Montreal. 
The customs officers were not vigilant or strict, and never pretended to 
collect duties on small quantities bought for personal or domestic use 
unless the smuggler operated so openly that he could not be ignored 
with safety. When Mr. Briggs did teaming between Fort Covington 



FOET COYIXGTON 325 

and Plattsburgh his employers would give him three dollars for the 
expenses of a round trip, of which seventy-five cents had to be paid 
for tolls, so that two dollars and a quarter was all that he had for other 
expenses for three nights and four days on the road. But even this 
was a munificent allowance in comparison with the funds that sufficed 
for his journey from Washington county with his father. There were 
eight in the party, and at the start fourteen dollars was the total amount 
in their possession. Three miles this side of Plattsburgh the sum had 
been reduced to three shillings, which one member of the company took 
at Ellenburgh, and pushed ahead on foot. Mr. Briggs and family wore 
two or three days completing the journey, without a cent of money. 
" We had to live plainly and work industriously. I had lived in the 
town thirteen years before I had anything but a lumber wagon in which 
to drive to church, and even then I was the first outside of the village 
to own a buggy, while in the village such vehicles were very few. 
* * * But the period of stress and stagnation following the war was 
nearing its end, and a year or two later prosperity came to the town — 
not in the degree by which we measure success and growth to-day, but 
in the modest way in which we estimated them then. * * * Farmers 
from all over the county brought their black salts there to market 
them. * * * All these influences combined to build up Fort Cov- 
ington, and it was from about 1822 to 1832 that the town witnessed its 
period of most rapid development and greatest prosperity. Men could 
not come here from all over the country to the southward with their 
produce without adding materially to the volume of the town's business. 
They found the place the best market accessible for their products, and 
these products brought them no cash except in rare instances. They 
had to take pay for them from the stores, so the town's merchants made 
money both on what they bought and on what they sold." But the 
year 1825 was a disastrous one. Lumber tumbled in price, and George 
~N. Seymour, Allan McHutcheon and Aretus and Myron Hitchcock 
failed. Indeed, as stated by Mr. Briggs, John Aiken, Benjamin Bay- 
mond and Warren L. Manning were the only merchants the town ever 
had in the earlier years who did not fail at some time, though most of 
them got on their feet again. 

The Franklin Telegraph contained advertisements by the following: 
William Burns, tea and sheetings, 1820; John Davidson, dry goods, 
groceries and tinsmith at Salmon River lines. 1820; James Campbell, 
Genesee flour, pork, and a thousand gallons of whiskey. 1821: P. B. 
Fiske, saddlery and boots and slices. 1821 : William Eerriek, soul 



326 History of Franklin County 

leather at twenty-six cents per pound by the hundredweight, 1824; 
John & B. Johnson, successors to B. Hawley & Co., in store in rear of 
Joseph Spencer's tavern, dry goods and groceries, in 1825, to which 
they added millinery later in the year, with a milliner " from the 
south;" Jeremiah Parker, tailor, 1825; A. McHutcheon & Co., a 
closing out sale of their stock of dry goods, groceries and hard and 
earthen ware, 1825; James Parker, saddlery, 1826; Miss H. W. Smith, 
a ladies' school in 1826 at Dr. Paddock's house, at which the tuition 
for instruction in reading, writing, English grammar, composition and 
geography was two dollars, and three dollars for rhetoric, history, 
philosophy, chemistry, ornamental needlework, and painting in oil 
colors and on velvet; and George B. R. Gove, at the old McHutcheon 
stand, salt, dry goods, groceries, hardware and whiskey, 1828. Mr. 
Gove also advertised brick-making in 1825; J. Congdon and E. A. 
Campbell a carding mill in 1821; and Dr. Eoswell Bates vaccination in 
1820 at a charge of twelve and a half cents per case " ready-pay " or 
twenty-five cents " trust." 

Spafford's Gazetteer, a standard work published in 1824, states that 
Port Covington then had forty-nine mechanics, two storekeepers, three 
grist mills, one fulling mill, two carding machines, one iron works, one 
nail factory, three tanneries and one ashery. At one time there were 
six asheries. 

The Franklin Republican, published at Fort Covington, 'contained 
these advertisements in 1828 : George B. E. Gove and John E. 
Johnston, merchants; Ora F. Paddock, druggist; and Thomas Mears, 
miller. In 1830 the following were advertisers in the same paper: 
David L. Seymour, potash kettles, salt, strong beer and sole leather; 
Orvis & Meeker, by George B. E. Gove, agent, tea and domestic goods; 
Aretus M. & M. Hitchcock, general merchants ; and William Cleveland 
and James Parker, hotels. The senior member of the firm of Meeker 
& Orvis was Uriah D. Meeker, who afterward became county clerk, and 
then was for many years deputy clerk and one of the most respected 
citizens of Malone. 

Quoting Mr. Briggs again : " I visited Malone for the first time in 
1822, and I should think that the towns were then of about equal size. 
I do not know whether Fort Covington ever contained actually more 
inhabitants than Malone. The latter had a larger area devoted to 
agriculture about it at that time than the former, and may have con- 
tained the most people. But about 1825 Fort Covington forged ahead 
of Malone from the business standpoint, and maintained the lead 



Fort Covington 327 

until the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Bailroad was built, though 
Malone seemed for a time, when its cotton factory was built, to have 
recovered at least a part of the ground lost." 

Unlike most of the other older towns, which were peopled so largely 
from Xew England, Fort Covington's earliest settlers were from 
Canada, and were of French extraction, with some sprinkling of Eng- 
lish and Scotch, though there were a few also from Vermont and from 
Washington county in this State. Indeed, perhaps the latter locality 
supplied the larger number of pioneers between, say, 1806 and 1820. 

The population of Fort Covington has had remarkable fluctuations. 
Three years after the town's erection it had just under one thousand, 
which exceeded that of any other town in the county except Malone, 
which outnumbered it by about 150. In 1825 it had increased to 
2,136, or 118 per cent., and in the ensuing five years there was a 
further gain of 32 per cent, to 2,901, which placed it ahead of Malone 
by about 700, or by 200 more than in 1825. Only in these years was 
it ever larger than Malone. In 1835 it had decreased to 1,665, a loss 
of 42 per cent. — due in the main, if not altogether, to the partition of 
the town to form Bombay. From this latter date there was a fair rate 
of growth to 1860, when the figures stood at 2,757 (about half as many 
as Malone then had), but following that year there was an almost 
unbroken decline to 1900, since when the population has been prac- 
tically stationary at a little over 2,000. The figures for 1915 are 
2,015, of which 199 are aliens, and the number residing in the village 
is 757. The village was incorporated in 1889. There are now seven 
towns in the county each having a larger population, and one other 
which is of about equal rank. 

While Fort Covington never at any time except in 1825 and 1830 
bad a larger population than Malone, it was nevertheless for a quarter 
of a century the more important and busier place. Its location gave 
it advantages which no other town in the county possessed. The 
Salmon river used to be navigable for barges and for steamboats that 
drew eight or nine feet to a point about a mile above Dundee, which 
made the place the natural port of entry and of exportation for the 
entire county and for the eastern section of St. Lawrence as well. 
Flour and other supplies had to be procured there or from Plattsburgh, 
and for a long time our lumber and black salts went there on their way 
to market in Montreal or Quebec. Its stores were the best stocked in 
the county, and it is not easily understandable why its pre-eminence 
was not greater than the record shows. It certainly had some enterpris- 



328 History of Franklin County 

ing and .strong men. In the number and ability of its members of the 
bar in early days it was particularly strong, and its physicians stood 
easily first. Politically it almost dominated the county at one time, 
when complaint used to be preferred against the interference and arro- 
gance of the " Fort Covington junta," as it later obtained concerning 
the " Malone ring." With everything so favoring it, it would seem that 
until Malone gained its railroad facilities it ought still more to have 
outranked and outstripped it. Can it be possible that even in early 
times a spirit of laissez faire prevailed, as it certainly did at a later 
period, a single illustration of which it is worth while to cite? Thirty- 
odd years ago Charles W. Breed of Malone visited the place for a part 
of a day, and dropped in for a call upon a druggist, who soon proposed 
a fishing trip down the river. Mr. Breed assenting, the druggist in 
question locked his store, and called upon his competing druggist (who 
was also postmaster) to join the party. The latter also locked his 
store and post-office, and the three were absent for some hours. One 
wonders if something of this attitude may not have been responsible 
for the deadness which for a long time characterized the Fort. But 
this is a long break in our story, and there ought to be a return to 
about 1820. 

John A. Qua gave his recollections of early Fort Covington in a 
letter published a few years ago. He came there from Washington 
county in 1819, when he says that there was no store except a small 
grocery, which was where the Gillis drug store stood later, though there 
were two places which sold liquor. All trading was done at Dundee. 
There was no school house, nor a church, and Alexander Cambpell had 
the only hotel, at the west end of the lower bridge. The village con- 
sisted of only a few log houses. Outside of the village on Drum street, 
the only residents were a Mr. Bussell, David Drum, Ebenezer Stevens 
and Sewall Gleason ; on the Bombay road, a Mr. Dana and Bobert and 
William Chapman; on the Deer Biver road, north of the Ellsworths, 
only two log houses ; on Creighton street, William Creighton and 
Samuel Fletcher; and on Burns street. George Larkin Burns, William 
Byan and William Holden. The first school house was on the Far- 
linger place, and the second on the Thomas W. Creed place. With the 
latter a town house was combined, in the upper room of which Lorenzo 
Coburn's reminiscences state that a Mr. Crosby had an " academy " 
(not incorporated) in 1825, and Bev. Elisha Hazard taught a district 
school in the lower room. Wages in 1819 were three shillings a day, 
and it is a safe sruess that a dav was longer than eigfif hours. 



Fort Covixgtux 329 

John H. Hatton did not become a resident until about 1850, but 
he was in time to gather a good deal of early history at first hand from 
those who had made it, which he published in his later years, lie 
names Charles Marsh (not mentioned either by Mr. Briggs or by Mr. 
Qua) as having been in trade in 1820. Mr. Marsh was decidedly pros- 
perous at one time, and devoutly religious. Indeed, Mr. Hatton says 
that he took upon himself the entire support of the Presbyterian 
church, less such contributions as others might volunteer to make, lie 
lived in an old stone house on Water street, just above the mouth of the 
Little Salmon, which sloped from the highway back to the bank of 
the river. It was built in four sections, so that the roof of each new 
part stepped down from the older. The newer parts were shed, store- 
house, etc. ; these have been torn down, and the front remodeled. It was 
known as " Marsh's castle." At one time the systematic smuggling 
practiced at the Fort was conducted largely by landing the goods at 
the river end of the building, and then secreting them in it until there 
should be opportunity for their removal. I have never heard, however, 
that Mr. Marsh was a party to such operations, or even privy to them. 
He failed about 1850 for more than twenty thousand dollars, afterward 
became insane, and died poor. He was thrown from a buggy thirty- 
odd years ago, and never recovered from his injuries. He came from 
Washington county by way of Montreal, where he got his training in 
merchandising. 

Still another merchant in the long ago was Samuel C. F. Thorndike 
of Malone, who, however, remained for only a short time. 

The activities of William Hogle, a notable personage at one time, 
were principally of a little later date. According to Mr. Hatton, he 
was an adopted son of George B. E. Gove, and his store at one time 
employed five clerks, and had so large a trade that all were kept busy. 
He went into the steamboat business, sinking over twenty thousand 
dollars in it, which ruined him financially. Later, however, he oper- 
ated the Gove saw mill, and manufactured saleratus on an extensive 
scale from pearl-ash. He had a wharf jtisi below where the Little 
Salmon empties into the Big Salmon, and used to ship potash or pearl- 
ash, hoop poles and Indian baskets by canal boat, via the St. Lawrence, 
the Richelieu river and Lake Champlain, to New York city. He was 
also a partner of Allen M. Lincoln for a short time in the manufacture 
of starch in the Luther Starks woolen mill. 

Yet more important factors in business than any of these were 
Benjamin Raymond, Warren L. Manning, Richard Grange and James 



330 History of Franklin County 

W. Kimball, all of whom were of a later period. Perhaps S. V. E. 
Tuthill, a partner of Mr. Manning, ought to be included in the list, and 
also D. E. Deneen and T. W. Creed as later extensive dealers. 

The story of the industrial establishments of Fort Covington is 
difficult to trace in detail with accuracy. The first were, of course, the 
Indian saw mill and the Eobertson grist mill, together known as the 
French mills. If taken literally, Mr. Constable's diary, locating the 
one on the north and the other on the south bank of the river, would 
require them to be either below the Lincoln tannery, where the river 
bends to the west, or south of Chateaugay street; and a map on file in 
the county clerk's office, made in 1835, actually shows them at the first 
mentioned point, which is an absurdity, because that site admits of no 
power development. Moreover, records in the Secretary of State's office 
at Albany establish incontestably that these mills were in the imme- 
diate vicinity of the sites of the present electric light plant and of the 
former McNaughton grist mill. An act of the Legislature, passed in 
April, 1819, providing for the sale of the lots in the mile square carried 
a prohibition against the issuance of a patent by the State to the heirs 
or legal representatives of James and Alexander Eobertson for the grist 
mill lot until they should pay to the State one hundred and twenty dol- 
lars, to be applied to the benefit of Eobert Buchanan. Knowing that it 
was the policy and law of the State that original occupants of any given 
parcel in this tract should have the preference in buying at the appraised 
valuation, but that nevertheless compensation must be made to the then 
tenants or occupants who had made improvements, the significance of 
the provision quoted from the law of 1819 is readily seen. Buchanan 
had been a lessee of the grist mill from the Eobertsons, and in the course 
of his fifteen years of such occupancy had doubtless laid out something 
on the property for betterments. The Eobertsons, apparently, declined 
to compensate him for these, and, the disagreement being carried to 
Albany, the State limited the prescriptive right of the Eobertsons to 
buy unless they complied with the general obligation to pay for improve- 
ments. The matter evidently dragged for six years, when, in 1825, 
Elizabeth Eobertson Stuart of Montreal, " sole heiress of James and 
Alexander Eobertson," met the stipulated condition, and received the 
State's patent to the lot on the west side of the river, where the electric 
light works are, which she contracted in 1831 to Thomas Mears of 
Hawkesbury, Ont., who was the father of Hamlet B. and Thomas Stew- 
art Mears. But if this be not enough to fix convincingly almost the 
precise spot where the first grist mill stood, it may be added that I have 



Fort Covington 331 

been privileged recently to see the notes on early Fort Covington that 
were made thirty or forty years ago by a gentleman who then examined 
carefully into the facts, when pioneers were still living to impart 
information, and these notes also locate the original mills at the 
places stated. Having in mind probably the general course of the 
river from where it passes out of Westville, Mr. Constable must have 
written " north " and " south " where " right " and " left " would 
have been more accurately descriptive. 

But before proceeding to designate as far as may be the various 
establishments that have nourished, decayed and disappeared at this 
center of activity during nearly four generations it seems pertinent to 
unfold more fully the conditions and record concerning the ceded lands 
in the mile square. 

Seven or eight years before its cession by the Indians to the State 
the Eobertsons sublet the east half of the tract to William Hawkins, 
who, unable to keep up his payments, repudiated his agreement with 
the lessors; but, instead of surrendering his holdings to them, deliv- 
ered back a part to the Indians. During his possession Hawkins had 
in 1809 and 1810 erected a new saw mill where the first one had 
stood. Ignoring their own lease to the Eobertsons, the Indians there- 
upon leased the lots between Mill street and the river, together with 
the saw mill thereon, to Wareham Hastings. 

The entire mile square, ceded by the Indians in 1816, was surveyed 
by State authorities in 1818 into " houselots " and "outlots." The 
former, numbering about one hundred, were of varying dimensions, 
and were all in localities which were expected to be occupied by 
village residences or commercial and manufacturing establishments. 
Two factors were to govern in the sale of these, viz., the estimated 
value of the land alone, and the appraised value of improvements, if 
any, added. For the unimproved lots or parts thereof (for some of 
the lots were sold as a whole, and others broken into two or three 
or even a half dozen parcels each) the prices ranged from fifteen dol- 
lars to two hundred dollars apiece, while the appraised value of improve- 
ments varied widely. For the lot on which the electric light works are 
the straight land value was appraised at $2,000, and the improvements 
at $3,120, out of which latter sum Buchanan was, of course, to get his 
$120, while the remainder represented the interest of the Eobertsons 
themselves — they having been the original builders. The value of the 
several lots lying between Mill street and the river was set at $1,000, 
and of the improvements at $1,500. 



332 History of Franklin County 

The " outlots " were in the outskirts of the mile square, and had an 
area of from two to thirty-four acres each. The number of such lots 
was twenty-one. 

Nlow for such history of the several mills and shops in the locality 
as I have been able to gather : 

According to the Constable diary, the saw mill on the east side of 
the river had gone into disuse by 1805. It had undoubtedly been a 
primitive and cheaply constructed affair, and naturally could not last 
long. By 1810 William Hawkins had rebuilt it, as shown by State 
records, and by 1816 Wareham Hastings had come into possession. The 
latter purchased the property outright from the State in 1822, and sold 
it the same year or the next to Joshua Aiken of Peru, who in turn 
disposed of it in 1823 for $5,300 to Benjamin Sanborn of Fort Coving- 
ton and Thomas Mears of Hawkesbury, Ont. The deed of conveyance 
includes both a saw mill and a grist mill. The latter was built by San- 
born, for Chapter 7 of the Laws of 1824 recites that he had by mis- 
take built a part of his grist mill on the lot above the one that he owned, 
and gave him the privilege of buying the additional lot. When and 
how the saw mill went out of existence I am unable to learn. In 1826 
Sanborn disposed of his interest in the property to Mears, and the grist 
mill remained thereafter for nearly half a century a Mears possession, 
though operated now and again under lease by other parties, — among 
whom were John and Eobert Patterson, who had it when it burned 
about 1870, Isaac Seeley, John Gillies and Gilbert A., Albon and Almon 
Wright. Later the Wrights had it by purchase, and sold it in 1888 
for twelve thousand dollars to the Fort Covington Milling Company 
(a MclSTaughton organization), which proceeded to lay out several thou- 
sand dollars additional in converting it into a roller-process mill and 
otherwise improving it. This company did aji extensive business for 
a number of years, smuggling wheat by the carload, and finally having 
to pay five thousand dollars to the United States government to settle 
the case against it. Not long after the dam had been carried off by a 
freshet in 1913, the mill burned, and has not been rebuilt. 

The " bark mill " marked on the map of 1818, which would natu- 
rally be supposed to belong to the Streeter tannery, was in fact an 
adjunct of William W. Herrick's, and had no water privilege except for 
grinding for that particular works. State records show that it had 
gone into practical disuse in 1832. Near this bark mill was Benjamin 
B. Streeter's tannery, in which Grindal Streeter was afterward a part- 
ner. A shoeshop was an adjunct of it, and not far away was a hat fac- 



Fort Covtngtoh 333 

tory run by one or more members of the family. At this factory high 
hats for men's dress wear were made. As I now visualize the only one 
of them that I ever saw, it might have served as a pattern for the 
gear that Uncle Sam is pictured as wearing, or it might have beeu 
copied from it. These hats were higher and larger than the mi 
silk tile, were of a yellowish tinge, and the plush or fur with which they 
were covered was nearly as long as the fur of an animal. 

It seems a reasonable assumption that the " clothiery " shown on the 1 
map was a carding mill- — perhaps that of J. Congdon and R. A. Camp- 
bell advertised in 1821, and also the same as that which George A. 
Cheney owned later % Certainly it could not have been a woolen fac- 
tory, for there was no such establishment in the county until alter L825. 

The triphammer works, as already stated, were owned and run by 
Jesse Woodbury, Jr. The census of 1825 lists, them as still in existence, 
but that of ten years later omits them altogether. 

Quite a distance down the river, and between the river and Water 
street, was William W. Herrick's tannery, with shoeshop connected with 
it. The precise date of its establishment can not be ascertained, hut 
certainly was 1818 or earlier. Walter Herrick, a grandson, is confident 
that it antedated Allen Lincoln's, which was on the lot next north, and 
probably was built in 1822. 

Mr. Lincoln had a shoeshop in connection witli his tannery, and also 
a store in one end of it, from which he wholesaled Large quantities of 
merchandise (then cheaper there than at Cornwall) to go into Canada 
for resale. When Mr. Lincoln identified himself with Fort ( 
there was not a house in the place that he could rent, and he had to fix 
his habitation temporarily in Westville — walking to his work every 
morning, and tramping home at night. His tannery, shoeshop, store, 
real estate investments and other activities prospered him remarkably", 
and no man in the town was of greater importance or more prominent. 
His estate, valued at one hundred thousand dollars, was one of the 
largest ever accumulated by anybody in Fort Covington. His tannery 
continued to be operated for a good many years, his son, Allen W. 
tanning it, and then James Blansfield. It was finally torn down. 

The Cheney carding mill and dye works were sold to John and 
Alexander M. Stewart, who converted the building into a furniture 
factory, which lire wiped out. 

James Courtney's carriage shop stands about where the Streeter tan- 
nery used to be. and is the only industry in the vicinity on the east side 
of the river where there were formerly so many. A part of the 



334 History of Franklin County 

Courtney building once stood on Water street, where Mr. Courtney 
understands that it was at one time a hotel, kept by a Mr. Dutcher, and 
then by Hiram Stafford, but which others remember as a saloon only. 

Near this point there was also a plant for rectifying whiskey, which 
was run by D. E. Deneen and Michael Mead. 

As already demonstrated, the first grist mill was located nearly oppo- 
site, close up to the dam on the west bank. The lot on which it stood 
was contracted in 1831 by a Robertson heir to Thomas Mears, who 
already owned a like mill on the east bank, and full title passed in 
1839. But the premises had been sold under a judgment in 1836, Ham- 
let B. Mears buying them in, and the sheriff's certificate of sale reciting 
that there were " grain mills, a distillery and outbuildings thereon." 
The deed of 1839, however, recites the description as it appeared in the 
contract of eight years earlier, and mentions only an old building that 
had theretofore been used as a mill, without specifying its kind, but 
which undoubtedly was the original grist mill of 1805. The census of 
1835 so lists it, but that of ten years later omits it, so that it must 
have disappeared, perhaps by decay or by fire, during that decade. 
Between the. contents of the contract of 1831 and the sheriff's certificate 
it is made to appear rather convincingly that the distillery was built 
between 1831 and 1836. It is understood to have been owned and 
operated by Aretus M. and Myron Hitchcock. How long it was run 
and what became of it is unknown, but my conjecture is that it became 
the Luther Starks woolen factory, as the latter was established in a 
building that was already standing, which the lessee undertook in his 
lease to complete and improve. 

In 1841 Hamlet B. and Thomas S. Mears leased to Luther Starks 
for ten years, with renewal privilege, a building and water rights on the 
west side of the river for a carding and fulling mill and for the manu- 
facture of cloth, the lessors reserving a right of way to a point below 
for a saw mill if they should build one there. By the terms of the lease 
Mr. Starks was to make specified changes and improvements in the 
building. He operated the industry until he committed suicide by cut- 
ting his throat in March, 1850. The business was continued for a few 
years thereafter by Tilness Briggs. 

The saw mill contemplated in the lease was built by the Messrs. 
Mears, and after a time was made over into a starch factory, which the 
Mears Brothers operated, followed by Gilbert A. Wright and then by 
Allen M. Lincoln and William Hogle. It had but a brief life. 

Both this starch factory and the Starks woolen mills were torn do wn, 



Fort Covington 335 

and the material in them utilized for the erection of a sash and door 
factory near by for Gilbert A. Wright, which was four stories in height, 
and is said to have contained ten thousand dollars' worth of machinery. 
It did a considerable business for a country plant until it was destroyed 
by fire. 

Matthew Fleming and Donald Chisholm had a wheelwright shop just 
below the starch mill, and later Seth Blanchard had one yet further 
down the stream. Both were burned. Lewis Bnllis also had one on 
Center street, east of Water street, and on Salmon street, below Center, 
James Somers had another, a good many years ago. The building is 
still standing, but is not in use. 

The sole industrial establishments in this immediate locality at present 
are the Courtney shop on the east side, and on the west bank the elec- 
tric light and power plant, the saw mill, planing mill and feed mill of 
Patrick and W. H. S. Keefe, who came from Canada in 1902, and first 
installed the electric works, which have a potential development of three 
hundred horse power. The rates for service are two dollars per month 
per light for residences and half a dollar more per light for commercial 
consumers. The arrangement induces free burning of lamps, with the 
result that Fort Covington always has the appearance of being one of 
the best lighted villages in Xorthern Xew York. Plans and terms were 
virtually agreed upon in 1917 by which Shields Brothers were to build 
a transmission line from the works to Bombay, and there use the cur- 
rent for lighting their factory and offices as well as other business places 
and residences. The Keefe dam was carried off by a freshet in 1913, 
and has been replaced by one of concrete. 

South of this center, close by the upper bridge, on the west side, 
Calvin Henry had a stone blacksmith shop in the long ago, which was 
displaced thirty years since by a furniture factory built by Spencer & 
Premo. The latter was converted a few years ago into a co-operative 
creamery, now owned and operated by Solon Storm. Almost directly 
across the stream was Daniel Noble's tannery and shoe shop. The 
building is now a barn, just in the rear of William G. Kelsey's dwelling 
house. Mr. Noble owned a considerahle tract of land south of the tan- 
nery, and an indentation of the river there has home the name Noble 
Bay for many years. 

At the so-called upper falls, south and east of the upper bridge, 
near the old Danforth saw mill, which age and high water put out of 
existence thirty or forty years ago, there was a carding and fulling 
mill and woolen factory at least as early as 1834. Luther Danforth 



336 History of Franklin County 

owned it in 1836, and presumably built it. He leased it in that year 
to Luther Starks and Sidney Briggs. According to the census this mill 
and the one on the Little Salmon in 1834 manufactured 22,407 yards 
of cloth valued at $6,885- — which was only about half as much as the 
like product of the county that was made in the same year in families, 
where in the same time there were also made 20,623 yards of cotton and 
linen. In that period nearly every family had its flock of sheep, and 
wives and daughters were accustomed to make the cloth required for 
practically all garments for men, women and children, as well as blankets 
and spreads for the beds and tables. Spinning and weaving were then 
included in the customary household accomplishments, and, indeed, as 
Gaillard Hunt puts it, "in the country each family was an independ- 
ency. * * * The household stood alone, and might be cut off from 
communication with the rest of the world for months at a time with- 
out inconvenience." Some specimens of these early manufactures are 
still to be found in Franklin county, and show an intricacy of design 
and a beauty of finish that are amazing for hand work. Even the 
President himself in 1809 wore a suit of homespun at his inauguration. 
Mr. Starks assigned his interest in the lease of the mill in 1839 to Daniel 
Eussell and D. Stiles McMillan ; and in 1843 the business was adver- 
tised under the name of Sidney Briggs & Co., who announced the price 
of twenty-five cents per yard for making gray cloth, or thirty cents for 
colored. In 1850 Mr. Briggs assigned his lease of the property to 
Benjamin Baymond, who in turn assigned it soon afterward to Alonzo 
Doane and Beuben Martin — Doane assigning his interest the same yeaT 
to Preserved Ware. In 1856 Mr. Martin came into actual ownership of 
the property. The operators of the mill from the time of Briggs to 
1866 are not surely ascertainable. Luther Danforth is claimed by 
some of the older people to have run it himself for a part of this period, 
while others insist that he never ran it himself at all. Tillness Briggs 
and Norman McPhee were both there for a time, and during a part of 
the period of Martin's ownership it was operated by his son-in-law, 
Elory Howard. Moses Santinee and Louis Currier, brothers-in-law, 
also ran it, but whether separately or in partnership no one seems to 
remember. In 1866 it was sold to Joseph Shannon, who, with his son, 
David, operated it except for a short time until it was sold to Thomas 
Davidson in 1893. Mr. Davidson still made cloth there occasionally in 
a small way until his death in 1917, but the establishment was better 
known as a carding mill, the only one of the many doing custom work 
that at one time flourished in the county. The old dam was carried 
off, and the plant depended upon a gasoline engine for power. 



Fort Covington 337 

Near this woolen mill Daniel Taro (brother of "poor Peter" of 
Malone, a skillful moulder sixty years ago, bul afterward a vagrant 
drunkard, who was killed on the railroad near Montreal) had a foundry 
before the civil war. A mortar and pestle made there may still be seen 
at the MacArtney drug store. 

Across the river from the woolen factory, but farther up the stream, 
Thomas Mears once had a saw mill, which was run as late as 1875 by 
S. J. Stewart, and still later by Allen Fay for his brothers, Joseph and 
James. Joseph now owns the site and power, the mill having gone out 
of existence. 

Toward the close of the civil war. when the price of cotton reached 
a fabulous figure, Gilbert A. Wright built a flax mill near this saw mill, 
and in 1866 sold a half interest in it to Hamlet B. Mears: but the 
enterprise did not prosper, and was abandoned — the building being 
made over into a sash and blind factory, and eventually burned. 

Daniel Whitney and Luther Bartlett had a tub factory in the same 
vicinity, which was owned and run later by Sands Austin. It was 
burned when Mrs. Lareach and two daughters were occupying the 
second story as a residence. The mother was old, and the night of the 
fire had been locked in while the daughters went to the village. Unable 
to make her escape, she was burned to death. 

Another tragedy near by was the drowning perhaps seventy years ago 
of Thomas Carter and two girls. They had been to church and return- 
ing had to cross the river in order to reach their home. The boat was 
small and unsteady, and, overturning, all weTe drowned. 

Over on the Little Salmon earlier than 1830 John Starks built the 
first woolen mill that the county ever had. Misfortune pursued him 
persistently, however, the mill having been carried off by a freshet 
while it was yet almost new, and, having been quickly rebuilt, was 
destroyed by fire in 1839 or 1840. Mr. Starks removed to Malone, and 
in 1843, in company with Cyrenus Gorton and George A. Cheney, 
bought the woolen mill now owned by the Lawrence- Webster Company, 
but failed soon afterward. His Fort Covington mill was rebuilt by 
Myron Hitchcock, who ran it for a time, and 1 am informed that Sidney 
Briggs also had it later. It was finally torn down or carried off by 
hiirh water. 

NVar the John Starks woolen factory was the dwelling house of 
Robert McPhee, an expert weaver who came from Paisley, Scotland, 
and set up loom^ in his house. He employed two or three hands, and 
turned out a considerable product of fine goods. 



338 History of Franklin County 

In this same locality George B. R. Gove built and ran a grist mill, a 
mill for grinding plaster and a saw mill. It is said that the plaster 
ground here was drawn to Plattsburgh, where it was sold as a fertilizer. 
The grist mill became the property of Judge Henry A. Paddock, son-in- 
law of Mr. Gove, and was sold by him in 1865 to Sherman B. Rickerson. 
Subsequent owners have been Thomas and William Hamilton, Robert 
Mitchell and now Archibald McXair. Though the mill still stands, it 
is useless, partly from depreciation and also for lack of power, the 
dam having been undermined. The Gove saw mill was run at one time 
by William Hogle, and fifty years ago or more he and Allen M. Lincoln 
had a starch mill there, which was owned afterward by Thomas W. 
Creed. It was carried off by a freshet in 1887. 

In view of the general practice in early times, it would be strange if 
there were not a saw mill on every stream in the town where a power 
could be developed ; but I have been able to obtain trace only of a few 
additional to those already named; all but two of these were in the 
vicinity of Deer River Corners, now called Fort Covington Center. 
The first of them was on the east branch of Deer river, and was doubt- 
less built by Jonathan Ordway; another, with a tub factory combined, 
was built by Nathan, James and Addison Inman, and was burned in 
1861 ; one a hundred rods up the stream, built by Edwin S. Bean in 
1857, sold to Richard Delarm, who resold to Mr. Bean, and the latter to 
Lewis Billings; another, still farther up the stream, built by Winchester 
Briggs, and gone long ago ; still another was built and run by Allen 
Ellsworth ; and on the west branch of Deer river Alonzo and William 
Ordway had a mill. Another industry in this locality was a brickyard 
on the Charles Erye farm, operated by Robert Cushman and Seth 
Blanchard. The field book of a State survey in 1832 shows a saw mill 
on Pike creek that had almost rotted down, and which at the date stated 
was owned by David McMillan. Information from another source fixes 
1813 as the date of its erection ; at a later date it was removed and 
rebuilt by Mr. McMillan farther up the creek. 

The earliest hotels in Fort Covington were one at the west end of 
the lower bridge on Center street in a building a part of which is now 
the residence of Frank J. Bucklin, and one in the building now occu- 
pied by the Allen S. Matthews estate as a tin and hardware store. Both 
of these were running in 1813, and perhaps earlier; the former with 
Alexander Campbell as landlord, but by whom the latter was first kept 
I am unable to ascertain. Lemuel K. Warren (who was a landlord at 
Hogansburgh in 1831) was its proprietor in 1820, and William Cleve- 



Fort Covington 339 

land had it in 1830. Mr. Cleveland had previously owned a distillery 
in M'alone, and kept a hotel on Webster street, near the Brewster resi- 
dence. Joseph Briggs erected a hotel almost on the international 
boundary in 1816, which was known as the Briggs bouse for more than 
forty years. Landlords there after Mr. Briggs were William Shedd, 
Albert Stebbins and John McGregor. It is now a private residence, 
occupied by Edward Chorette. An act of the Legislature passed in 
1825 authorized the leasing of a quarter of an acre of land owned by 
the State which was bounded on the north by Chateaugay street, on the 
west by Salmon street, and on the east and south by Salmon river 
(which is the lot where the creamery now is, or near it) to Benjamin 
Sanborn, provided he erect thereon a tavern house and outbuildings, 
but with the restriction that no part of the premises be used as a deposit 
for saw logs or lumber. Whether Mr. Sanborn ever built the bote! I do 
not know. In 1825 JosejDh Spencer, the elder, had a hotel the location 
of which I cannot fix. Merchants by the name of Johnson advertised 
their store "in the rear of Joseph Spencer's tavern." Harvey Clark 
had a hotel on the lot immediately west of the school house grounds 
(now known as the Sawyer lot) as early as 1819 or 1820, which be 
rebuilt in 182-1. The new house burned in 1827, and while it is known 
that Mr. Clark was still an innkeeper a year or two later, it is impossible 
to determine whether it was at this same point or elsewhere. He was a 
brother-in-law of Rev. Nathaniel Colver, who boarded with him in 1821, 
and who wrote to Mrs. Colver that he could see from his chamber 
window "every morning and evening from one to three deer within 
about a hundred and fifty rods, playing in the meadows." James 
Parker had a hotel in 1830, which was probably the present Northern 
Hotel on "Water street,* which he is said to have built. The latter has 
had many landlords since that time, among whom the following are 
recalled: Osborn Allen (the grandfather of J. 0. Allen of Brushton >. 
Alexis Dutcher, Oliver Paddock, F. W. Stoughton, and David and 
Robert Stafford for a few years following the civil war, Tom Lee, 
Samuel McElwain, Dan. Taillon and King Kellogg. During the Staf- 
ford regime Fort Covington was engaged in a big fight to give the town 
a temperance character, but the Staffords persisted defiantly in the sale 
of liquor, and were frequently indicted and fined therefor. David 
became violently insane in 1873. Mr. McElwain committed suicide by 
cutting his throat in 1883. Another old hotel was the so-called "old 



* The Northern Hotel was closed in the spring of 1918, and its furnishings sold 
at auction. It seems doubtful if there will ever be occasion to reopen it. 



340 History of Franklin County 

red house " on Mill street, which was kept by Judge James Campbell. 
The date of the building of the American or Spencer House is unknown, 
but it was certainly in existence as early as 1837, and even may have 
been the hotel kept by Joseph Spencer, the elder, in 1825, in the rear of 
which was the Johnson store. Samuel Browning, afterward at Hogans- 
burgh and then proprietor of the Ottawa House in Montreal, kept the 
American House at one time, and other hosts there include James Caul, 
Joseph Spencer, the younger, N. Hollenback, Fitch O'Brian, Duncan 
M. Cameron, Alexander Gardner, Charles Kellogg, and now Daniel 
Grant. This hotel was a military barracks in 1837 or 1838, when 
troops were stationed in the town to enforce our neutrality laws during 
the Papineau rebellion in Canada. The American House and the 
Northern Hotel are the only present inns in the town, and, unlike most 
other towns in early days, Fort Covington does not appear to have ever 
had taverns outside of the village. 

Fort Covington's first newspaper was the Franklin Republican, 
founded by J. K. Averill in 1827, and then published by Samuel Hoard, 
with Francis D. Flanders as associate editor, until 1833 ; the Franklin 
Gazette, established by Mr. Flanders in 1837, and removed to Malone 
in 1845, when Mr. Flanders was Assemblyman ; the Salmon Eiver 
Messenger (sometimes derisively called the Mullet) which J. Dennison 
Fiske founded in 1851, and which J. Seeley Sargent (who removed to 
New Orleans) published later until it was discontinued after a year or 
so : the St. Lawrence Valley Record, founded by William Manson and 
published for a few years until 1876, when it was discontinued ; the 
Sun, started by Eansom Eowe in 1885, and since his death, ten years 
afterward, published by Isaac N. Lyons; and the Advertiser, established 
by Frank J. Bucklin in 1910, but discontinued in 1917. 

Fort Covington Academy was chartered April 21, 1831, and notes 
were given to the amount of nearly three thousand dollars by a number 
of men of the vicmity, with promise to pay annually the interest on 
their obligations toward the support of the institution. The upper 
room in the town hall, which at that time was on the Creed lot at the 
corner of Chateaugay and High streets, was used at first for a school 
room, as it had previously been used for a private academy that was 
taught in 1825 by a Rev. Mr. Crosby. A stone building two stories in 
height was erected for it the next year on the public square on the west 
side of the river, on the same lot that is occupied by the present high 
school. The original structure was burned in 1874, and was rebuilt in 
1S7(i. The academic charter was surrendered in 1904, and the hi<rh 



Fort Covingtox 341 

school with an academic department authorized ai the same time. The 
number of academic students ranged for a long time in early days 
between twenty-five (in 1840) and seventy-five (in 18-12), in which 
latter year the fees received for tuition aggregated right Inn 
dollars. The high school now employs three teachers and has fifty- 
five pupils. 

Transportation conditions comprise an interesting story. In early 
years the Salmon river was navigable even for large boats to a point 
south of the international boundary, and much freight was sent out and 
brought in by water, and a considerable passenger traffic was fostered. 
Local parties were both steamboat builders and owners, though most 
who so operated lost amounts which in those days were accounted a 
fortune. The principal market was of course Montreal, but in some 
cases shipments were made directly to New York city. In L866 two 
lines of steamers were running between Dundee, Que., and Montreal, 
with competition so keen that the fare was only a sixpence; and in 1881 
there were four lines of boats plying between Dundee and Cornwall, 
Dundee and Lancaster and St. Anicet, Dundee and Ogdensburg, and 
Dundee and Massena. each having a good patronage. In those days 
Tort Covington got its coal by water, and the price there was so much 
less than in Malone that in some cases it was hauled by team from the 
former point to the latter, whereas now the Malone price averages the 
lower. The channel of the Salmon is at present so -hallow that even 
motor pleasure craft scrape the bottom at some points — due in part 
of course to the fact of filling in, but perhaps also to the fact that the 
level of the St. Lawrence itself is claimed to be lower than formerly. 
Something like thirty years ago the federal government made an appro- 
priation for dredging the Salmon, and in 1889 the State appropriated 
ten thousand dollars for the same purpose. But there could be no value 
to these operations so long as nothing was clone from the boundary 
north, and Canada would do nothing in the matter, as its engineers esti- 
mated that it would require a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to 
dredge the river properly through the Dominion to the St. Lawrence. 

But advantageous and beneficial as water navigation was in former 
years, the need for railway facilities was felt, and agitation to obtain 
them developed in 1866, or perhaps a trifle earlier, and continued inter- 
mittently and spasmodically for fifteen or eighteen years before success 
was realized. The first movemei it of the sort of which I have knowledge 
began about L866, when it was proposed to build from Potsdam Junction 
(now Norwood) to St. Lambert, Que. Public meetings were held in 



342 History of Franklin County 

every hamlet in the northern part of the county, and as the constitu- 
tional prohibition against granting aid to private enterprises was not 
then in force Fort Covington voted to bond for seventy-five thousand 
dollars and Bombay for fifty thousand dollars as a bonus, while 
individuals pledged sums upon a like basis up to five hundred dollars 
each. The undertaking never went further, and about 1868 a new pro- 
ject was presented and urged — which looked to the building of a road 
via Malone to Ausable Forks, where connection was to be made with 
the Delaware and Hudson system. This also failed of practical result, 
and in 1872 the proposition was advanced to construct a line from 
Montreal to Massena. Again Fort Covington voted to give a bonus of 
seventy-five thousand dollars, Bombay of forty thousand, and individuals 
generous amounts. Matters then dragged for ten years, when construc- 
tion was actually begun under Grand Trunk auspices, and the line 
opened for business in 1883. No local aid was given except for rights 
of way and some small personal subscriptions. In 1887 the contract 
was let for an extension from Fort Covington to Massena, the work of 
building was rushed, and thus Fort Covington gained a rail outlet east- 
ward through Canada to New England points and westward to the Xew 
York Central system, though the service is not particularly good as 
respects passenger accommodations. 

The St. Lawrence Valley Agricultural Society was formed in 1871, 
and held annual exhibitions on well chosen and excellently fitted grounds 
to and including 1875 — five in all. Enterprising farmers and business 
men stood by the project enthusiastically and loyally, but every year 
expenses exceeded receipts, so that when the affairs of the society were 
finally wound up in 1883 the life members, numbering seventy-five, had 
to pay about fifty-five dollars each to discharge the debts. 

The first murder committed in Franklin county was perpetrated in 
Fort Covington February 2, 1825. The victim was Fanny Mosely, who 
had formerly lived at Hawkesbury, Ont., where she had been married 
three or four years previously to a worthless schoolmaster, and had come 
to Fort Covington for a wedding trip. There her husband stole all of 
the money, two hundred dollars, that her father had given her as a 
marriage portion, and also a sleigh and a pair of horses derived from 
the same source, deserted her, and was never afterward heard from. 
Thus abandoned and left destitute, Mrs. Mosely became a tailoress, won 
general respect, and accumulated some property. In 1824 she went to 
the Videtoes, two or three miles south from the village, to make her 
home, and became engaged to Stephen A T idetoe, with arrangements for 



Fort Covington 343 

the marriage to occur a few days subsequent to the date of the murder. 
At the time that the crime was committed Videtoe and Mrs. Mosely 
were alone in the house, except for Videtoe's parents, who were sleeping 
in the kitchen. Yidetoe had pretended for some days previously that 
he had seen Indians about the premises, and simulated fear that they 
meant to massacre the members of the household. Accordingly he pro- 
cured a gun and ammunition, and after darkening the window with a 
blanket shot Mrs. Mosely, and, death not being instantaneous, gave her 
wine which contained arsenic. She died after two or three hours, 
ignorant that her affianced was her murderer. Yidetoe gave out the 
report that Indians had come to the house, broken the window near the 
victim's bed, and shot through the aperture. At first his account of the 
affair was accepted generally as truthful, and, spreading with amazing 
rapidity, soon brought men armed and grimly determined to hunt down 
the assassins and give them summary justice. But no tracks were to be 
found in the snow leading to or from the house, and, it becoming mani- 
fest that the window had been broken from within instead of from with- 
out, and it appearing also that the bullet could not possibly have taken 
the course it did if fired as Yidetoe had represented, the theory of 
Indian perpetration was quickly abandoned, and Yidetoe was arrested. 
The trial in the following July continued for five days, and though the 
evidence was almost wholly circumstantial it was deemed so convincing 
that the jury required only a few minutes to find a verdict of guilty. 
Some features of the trial seem curious to-day. The sessions of the 
court began at seven o'clock mornings, and were continued until late 
every evening — the final session not having been concluded until five 
o'clock in the morning. Just preceding or just following the judge's 
charge, a prayer was offered by Rev. Mr. Colver. The execution was 
August 26, 1825, and was public. It occurred on the lot on Elm street 
in Malone, just east of Mrs. Gilbert's, now owned by Harry H. Hawley, 
which was long known as " gallows hollow." Crowds of people coming 
from all parts of the county were present to witness the gruesome affair. 
Videtoe protested his innocence to the last, and went to the gallows with 
a written denial of his guilt in his hand, and even after the trap was 
sprung changed the paper from one hand to the other and waved it at 
the crowd. The motive for the crime was of course never positively 
known, but was conjectured to have been jealousy, or possibly a desire 
to avoid the marriage. Yidetoe was about twenty-five years of age. 

A second murder, suggesting in some of its phases the Yidetoe affair, 
was perpetrated November 18, 1885, by Edward Gower. The victim 



344 History of Franklin County 

•was his wife. They lived in a rude hut west of Fort Covington Center, 
and had been to Brushton to market their turkeys. On the way home, 
bath having got out of the wagon, their horse ran away, and Grower 
pursued it, leaving the woman to follow at her pleasure. Gower's story 
ran that after reaching home and waiting a time for Mrs. Gower, he 
assumed that she had stopped for the night with a neighbor, and went 
to bed. He claimed to have been awakened by a crash of breaking glass, 
and to have tired through the window in the belief that mischievous boys 
were about, and with intent to frighten them away, after which he 
insisted that he returned to bed, and knew nothing of the fatal result of 
his shot until the next morning, when he found his wife dead under the 
window. Blood prints on the window casing indicated that Mrs. Gower 
had tried to get into the house after she had been shot, and the belief 
Avas that she had returned home soon after Gower himself arrived, had 
been thrust out by him, and then shot deliberately through the window. 
The prosecution contended that it would have been impossible to inflict 
the wound had Gower fired as he claimed to have done. Mrs. Gower 
was seventy years of age. A plea of guilty of manslaughter in the 
second degree was accepted by the court, and the prisoner was sentenced 
to imprisonment at Dannemora for one year. 

A calamity of a different sort occurred in the town May 12, 1875, 
when a tornado swept over a section of the village. The schoolhouse 
near Malachi Barry's was unroofed, a daughter of Mrs. Fanny Brown 
instantly killed, and a child of Harry Lowe seriously injured. Others 
of the school children were also slightly hurt. The path of the wind 
was narrow, but ten or fifteen other buildings were partly wrecked, and 
in one case where a fence was destroyed every post was pulled out of 
the ground. 

The record of public offices held by Fort Covington residents is 
formidable, and demonstrates that the town has not been slow in gain- 
ing recognition of the political claims of its people. Excluding minor 
positions, like coroner, associate judge of the court of common pleas, 
loan commissioner, attorney for the St. Regis Indians, subordinates in 
the customs office and clerkships at Albany and Washington, the list is 
as follows : 

School Commissioners. — William Gillis, George W. Lewis and William G. 
Cushman. 

Deputy Collectors of Customs. — Seth Blanchard, John Hunsden, James Camp- 
hell, John McCrea. James B. Spencer, James Campbell, Samuel H. Payne, Ezra 
Stiles, George B. R. Gove, Ezra Stiles, Philo A. Matthews, S. E. Blood, A. S. 
Creighton, George S. Henry, Sidney Ellsworth, Rodney Russell. 

Sheriffs. — James Campbell, James C. Sawyer. 



FOET COVIINGTOX 345 

District Attorneys. — Henry A. Paddock, Waller Payne. 

Surrogates. — James B. Spencer, Henry A. Paddock. 

County Judges. — William Hogan, Roswell Bates, Joseph R. Flanders, Henry A. 
Paddock. 

County Clerks. — George B. R. Gove, Uriah D. Meeker, Francis D. Flanders, 
Edward A. Whitney, Almerin W. Merrick. 

Representatives in Congress. — William Hogan, James B. Spencer. 

Members of Assembly.— William Eogan, George I>. K. Gove, James Campbell, 
James B. Spencer, Jabez Parkhurst, Francis I). Flanders, Joseph R. Flanders. 
George B. R. Gove, James W. Kimball, Allen S. Matthews. 

Presidential Electors. — James Campbell, James B. Spencer. 

It is interesting to note that besides presiding on the hench Dr. Eos- 
well Bates was upon one occasion himself arraigned in circumsta 
that must seem amazing to the present generation, which apparently 
holds the Sabbath in so indifferent estimation. The doctor started, one 
►Sunday afternoon or evening from Fort Covington to drive to Malone, 
where he was to spend the night with his sister, Mrs. Leonard Conant, 
and then get an early start on Monday for a visit in Vermont. At 
Westville he was overtaken by an officer, who, apprehending him, 
escorted him back to Fort Covington, where he was arraigned the next 
day and fined for having traveled otherwise than professionally on Sun- 
day. His church also took him to task for the offense, and disciplined 
him by denying him the privilege of partaking the communion until he 
should express penitence, which he did after half a year. At the time 
in question a State statute prohibited traveling on the Sabbath excepl 
in cases of charity or necessity, or in going to or returning from wor- 
ship, visiting the sick and certain other specified cases. 

Some Former Eesidents 

A number of former residents deserve special mention, some because 
of notable achievements, and others because their life history is of 
exceptional interest. 

William Purcell was born in Fort Covington August 15, 1830. and 
at the age of three years removed with bis parents to Eochester, where 
he became a newsboy, then a printer, and at length an editor. He 
founded the Eochester Union in 1852, and remained its editor excepl 
for a few months in 1884 until his death in 11305. His retirement in 
1884 was voluntary, and was dictated by the fact that he could not con- 
scientiously support Mr. Cleveland fur the Presidency. The Union was 
the strongest and best Democratic paper in Western New York. Mr. 
Purcell was for six years a member of the Democratic State committee, 
and its chairman in 1879. lie was for a long time one of the board 
of managers of the State industrial school at Eochester, serving as its 



346 History of Franklin (County 

president, and was also a member of the State board of mediation and 
arbitration. In 1881 he was defeated for Secretary of State. 

James McMahon, born in Fort Covington in 1831, removed while 
yet a child to Rochester, where, upon reaching manhood, he engaged in 
the book trade, and afterward in the transportation business in a large 
way. This work led to his removal to Xew York city, where he became 
connected with the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in 1878, and 
continued with it until 1906, becoming its president. The institution 
is the largest savings bank in the world, and has over a hundred million 
dollars of deposits. Mr. McMahon was also a director or trustee in 
several commercial banks, trust companies and fire insurance companies, 
and was actively and usefully associated with a number of important 
charitable and philanthropic associations. During the latter part of 
his life he made his home in Brooklyn, where he was a member of the 
board of education, but never held or sought any distinctively political 
office. He died in 1913. 

W. H. Hawkins, born in Fort Covington in 1816, died at Potsdam 
February 9, 1889. Mr. Hawkins was educated at Franklin Academy, 
Malone, and at an early age entered the ministry of the Methodist 
Episcopal church. Among other charges served by him were Chat- 
eaugay, Fort Covington and Malone. He was also once presiding elder 
of the Potsdam district. Retiring from the ministry, he located at 
Potsdam, engaged in the mercantile business, and acquired a competence. 

Daniel E. Cameron, brother of James ("Black Jim"), was born at 
Summerstown, Canada. Locating in Fort Covington, he was at one 
time in business with Preserved Ware, but removed to Chicago a good 
many years ago. There larger opportunities and his own fine qualities 
of good fellowship and excellent natural abilities led to big business 
connections. He was at one time associated with the famous publishing 
house of Culver, Page & Home, and later entered into a partnership 
with Mr. Amberg, whose index files are known throughout the world. 
Mr. Cameron was president of Chicago's board of education for a long 
time. He became wealthy, retired from business, and removed to 
Altadena, Calif., where he had one of the finest homes in the State, and 
entertained in a princely way. He died in 1918. 

William C. Kingsley as he was called in Brooklyn, but Kinsella as 
the family was always called in Franklin county and on the border, was 
born in the edge of Canada, and really was not identified with Fort 
Covington except as a student at the academy in his boyhood. He left 
the locality while yet a youth, taught school and engaged in the con- 



Fort Covington 347 

tracting business in Pennsylvania, built a railroad in Illinois, and at the 
age of twenty-five years located in Brooklyn in 1858. There he con- 
tinued in the contracting business, building a large part of the city's 
water-works and sewerage system, improving the so-called Wallabout 
district, and constructing the big storage reservoir at Hempstead. He 
was among the first to suggest bridging the East river, and became the 
foremost advocate of the project — arguing and elaborating the idea so 
convincingly that the Legislature was persuaded by his presentation of 
the matter in 1867 to authorize the undertaking, which in the beginning 
was designed, to be wholly a private enterprise. Mr. Kingsley raised the 
first five million dollars for beginning the work, he and his partner 
making the largest individual subscriptions for stock in the company. 
Mr. Kingsley became superintendent of construction, and then was 
successively trustee, vice-president, and from 1882 until his death 
president of the corporation — serving in the last stated capacity with- 
out compensation, as he donated his salary of five thousand dollars a 
year to the bridge fund. He was a director in many semi-public service 
organizations of the city and in many financial institutions, was par- 
ticularly active and helpful in developing Coney Island and Prospect 
Park, and was the largest stockholder in the Brooklyn Eagle. Though 
a leader of the Democratic party in Kings county for a long time, and 
though both local and national dignities of a political character were 
more than once within his reach, he never held public office. He died 
in 1885, and Hugh McLaughlin said of him that he was the ablest man 
that ever took part in Brooklyn affairs. 

James Farnsworth Pierce, born in Madrid in 1830, practiced law in 
Fort Covington for a year or two in the fifties. Eeturning to St. 
Lawrence county, he was elected county clerk on the Democratic ticket 
in 1861. He removed to !STew York in 1865, his Democracy ingratiating 
him promptly with the machine in Brooklyn, so that he was sent to the 
State Senate in 1868, and between that date and 1890 was given four 
more terms in that body. In 1894 he was appointed State superin- 
tendent of insurance, and in 1897 resumed the practice of law in New 
York, where William A. Wolff (formerly of Malone) became one of 
his partners. Mr. Pierce was not a particularly strong man, nor was he 
regarded as finely scrupulous, but he was exceedingly adaptable, very 
genial and made friends easily. 

Samuel Hoard came to Fort Covington in 1827, ami purchased the 
Franklin Telegraph, which bad been founded a few months earlier. 
Discontinuing the publication in 1833, he removed \<> Ogdensburg, 



348 History of Franklin County 

where he published the St. Lawrence Republican. Kemoving to 
Chicago, he became prominent there and rich. He had a beautiful 
home, was postmaster, and died in 1881. 

Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul, 
We ne'er shall see him more. 

The John H. Hatton letter from which quotations have been -made 
states that old Grimes, the veritable character of song and story, was at 
one time a boarder at the Spencer House, and a few years ago, while on 
vacation at Fort Covington, his old home, William Ryan, a newspaper 
man, wrote for the New York Times what purported to be an authentic 
narrative of the Grimes character and conduct in the vicinity. Mr. 
Eyan says that Grimes, whose given name was Ephraim, came from New 
England, first to St. Agnes, Que., in 1835, and six months later to Fort 
Covington. He Avas ostensibly a shingle maker and shingler, though 
according to Mr. Eyan he performed no labor in all of the time that he 
was at Fort Covington until just before his departure, and yet always 
had money to spend, which it is said that he obtained by making 
counterfeit silver coins. These he is represented to have sent to Ver- 
mont by a woman to be put into circulation, and in exchange for which 
she sent good bank notes to Grimes. After quitting the Spencer House 
as a boarding place he is said to have lived in a hut in the outskirts of 
the village, and when, towards the last of his stay, his spurious coins 
began to circulate in the vicinity, and suspicion came to be directed 
against him, he sneaked away one night, and never returned. The 
story runs, further, that after his departure his hut was searched, and 
tbe dies which he had used were found in it. Mr. Eyan gives to Grimes 
the character of a fertile and ingenious fabricator, an entertaining 
raconteur to hear whom the people came from miles around, an inveter- 
ate jester of an assumed simplicity and ingenuousness that made him a 
general favorite, and that gained confidence for him until his actual 
operations became suspected and finally proven. 

Charles E. Perrin was the son of Solon of Fort Covington, and a 
nephew of Henry J. Perrin, a respected farmer in Malone. Charles was 
a printer, and worked in the Franklin Gazette office. He left Malone 
during the civil war, and entered upon evil ways. Soon after the close 
of the war he paid Malone a visit, and created quite a sensation by reason 
of his ultra fashionable dress and fine presence and manners. A woman 
who posed as his wife accompanied him, but it was afterward ascertained 
that there had been no marriage, and that the relations of the two were 
illicit. Shortly afterward Perrin was convicted for having burglarized 



Fort Covington 349 

a wholesale house in New York city by which he realized a large amount 
of plunder, and was sentenced to imprisonment for four years, which 
term expired in 18T3. There is a story, though not authenticated so 
far as I know, that he was also guilty of arson in New Jersey. In 
1874 he participated in a forgery scheme, the largest of its kind ever 
successfully carried through, which marketed eight hundred thousand 
dollars of bonds of the Buffalo, Erie and New York Railroad, the New 
York Central, and the Chicago and Northwestern. The forging was 
done by others, and Perrin's part was to sell the bonds, which were so 
cleverly executed that they deceived not only the officers of banks, trusl 
companies and bond dealers, but even the officials of one of the railroad 
companies, who redeemed forty thousand dollars of them without sus- 
picion that they were spurious. Three bond houses bought so heavily of 
them that their losses forced them into bankruptcy. Perrin's individual 
share of the clean, up is said to have been a hundred thousand dollars. 
and when discovery of the forgeries was made he had sufficient warning 
to enable him to escape to Europe. But in 1875 he was once more in 
New York and again in a similar deal. He was recognized, arrested, 
and sent to Sing Sing for a term of fifteen years, but within eight 
months plotted and organized with others a scheme for escape by firing 
the bake-house. The attempt was successful as regards Perrin, and he 
again took refuge in Europe, where he operated along his customary 
lines, first in Paris and then in London. While he was not himself a 
forger of engraved securities he appears to have been an expert in 
similar work where the pen would serve his purposes, and in London he 
succeeded in swindling a hank heavily, for which he was sent to prison 
in 1877 for ten years. But he turned State's evidence, and was released 
in 1883, when he returned to this country by way of Canada, and pro- 
ceeded to St. Louis, Mo. There he opened large accounts in a number 
of banks preparatory to plundering them later by means of forged drafts. 
Again he was caught, convicted, and sentenced to ten years" imprison- 
ment, which, with allowances for good behavior, expired in 1892. Upon 
his release he was delivered to the New York authorities to s< rve out at 
Sing Sing the term to which he had been sentenced in 1875. lie was 
transferred from Sing Sing to Dannemora about 1898, and was dis- 
charged from the latter institution in 190?. In the winter of L903, 
while pretending to be in the real estate business in New York city, he 
made a fake purchase of a country place in Dutchess county for $10,000, 
and insured the buildings on it for $19,000. Fire soon followed, and 
Pen-in (then operating under the alias of Ball) was arrested upon a 



350 History of Franklin 'County 

charge of arson. According to Perrin, the seller of the property was 
really the chief conspirator, and because he turned State's evidence he 
was released upon his own recognizance in 1904, since when I have not 
been able to trace him. Inspector Byrnes in his book telling of extraor- 
dinary crimes and professional criminals says of Perrin that some of 
his aliases were Stevens, Franklin, Cherwoocl, Williamson and Vincent, 
and that he generally wore a full black beard, dressed well, and con- 
versed in an easy tone. Byrnes characterizes him as " one of the most 
extraordinary criminals that this country ever produced, and a man of 
great abilit}*", imposing appearance, and iron nerve," having been 
credited among his pals and the police as one of the two " smartest 
people in his line in the world." Except at the times when he was in 
prison Byrnes says that few extensive forgeries were undertaken in 
which Perrin was not depended upon for the dealings by which capital 
was to be duped into buying the output. 

Amos S. Kimball entered the United States volunteer army as 
quartermaster of the 98th regiment at Malone in 1862, served through- 
out the war, and then was continued in the regular army — eventually 
becoming quartermaster general. The final years of his service were 
spent in New York city. He died in Washington, D. C, in 1909. He 
is said to have been worth a million dollars. 

David, William and Allen Streeter are sons of Grindal and grandsons 
of Benjamin. They removed to Chicago several years ago, engaged in 
business there and prospered. At least one of them is now rated as a 
millionaire. David is at present a resident of California, and the old 
home in Fort Covington is packed with interesting art objects and 
curios that he collected in his travels over all the world. 

James C. Spencer was the son of Captain James B., and was a 
lawyer of bright mind and good attainments. He moved to Ogdensburg 
in 1854, where he practiced law and held the office of United States 
attorney for the district of Northern New York. Bemoving to New 
York city in 1866, he quickly formed friendly relations with the Demo- 
cratic leaders, and enjoyed preferences and benefits through their 
influence. He became judge of the superior court, and was appointed 
receiver of the Erie Railroad. His first wife was a daughter of Benja- 
min Raymond and a sister of Mrs. Joseph R. Flanders. Miss Sarah 
Spencer, a student at Franklin Academy more years ago than she would 
now confess, and in recent summers an occasional visitor to Malone as 
Mrs. Spencer-Browne, is his niece. Judge Spencer died in New York 
citv in 1902. 



Fort Covington 351 

Eev. Nathaniel Colver, who, next perhaps to Rev. Ashbel Parmelee, 
was the strongest man intellectually who ever served in Franklin 
county as a clergyman, visited a relative in Fort Covington in 1820, 

and the next year was solicited by a number of residents, irrespective of 
their several denominational affiliations, to settle there as pastor of a 
church to be formed. He accepted and remained for eight years — a 
tireless worker, delighting in controversy and reveling in agitation of 
one kind or another. His biography was written and published forty- 
odd years ago by a fellow clergyman, and I condense from a copy of the 
work: Mr. Colver was a tanner and currier by trade, and never had 
any schooling except during winters. His first service in a pulpit was 
near Albany, where he had gone from his Massachusetts home merely 
to hold a prayer meeting. Though without the slightest ministerial 
training, the circumstances at this meeting seemed to compel him to 
preach, and he delivered three sermons without any previous prepara- 
tion, and under protest that he had not even a text and that he had 
utterly refused in advance even to consider the suggestion that he 
preach. Mr. Colver officiated not only as pastor of the Baptist church 
which he organized at Fort Covington, but also held mission services at 
many points in Franklin and St. Lawrence counties. He became a 
Mason at Fort Covington, but formally renounced connection with the 
order in 1S29, having practically withdrawn from it some years pre- 
viously. That was during the fierce anti-Masonic times, and bis course 
was productive of angry resentment on the part of those who con- 
tinued to adhere to Masonry, and of eager approval by the anti-Masons. 
Mr. Colver's first public utterance in denunciation of the order was in 
the court house in Malone before an audience that packed the room, and 
thereafter he continued the crusade vigorously by speaking on the sub- 
ject at many points in Northern New York and throughout Vermont. 
In 1829 he accepted a call from a church in Washington county, where 
he remained for ten vears, though often during the period engaging in 
revival work at Poughkeepsie, Philadelphia. Richmond and other cities. 
In 1839 he went to Boston to take the pastorate of Tremoni Temple, 
which was purchased at a cost of fifty-five thousand dollars to be made 
over into a church expressly for him. There he remained until 1852, 
and then removed to Detroit, Mich. — visiting Malone and Fori Coving- 
ton on the way. and preaching at both places. In 1856 he located at 
Cincinnati for five vears. and next was in Chicago until 1867, when be 
went to Richmond to found a school for the training of negroes for the 
Baptist ministry. This school had its beginning in a slave pen. known 



352 History of Franklin (County 

as Lumpkin's jail, and has grown into the Virginia University, a good 
sized college. Mr. Colver died in Chicago in 1870. He is said to have 
had a striking presence, with a power of address that entranced his 
hearers and often moved an entire congregation to tears. Once in a 
church convention debate on slavery he replied to a Governor from a 
Southern State, speaking for an hour practically extemporaneously, 
with so impassioned force and eloquence that the Governor declared 
that though he had heard Henry Clay and Daniel Webster at their best, 
he had never before listened to such oratory. Almost unlettered when 
he began his work at Fort Covington, and never attaining to fine 
scholarship, and at times dropping even into crudity of expression and 
trampling upon grammatical construction, yet men in the ministry who 
Avere distinguished for their educational acquirements pronounced him 
one of the most engaging and strongest speakers that they had ever 
heard. He was by nature impulsive, radical and intense. Besides his 
anti-Masonic agitation, he became a zealous temperance apostle and a 
hot abolitionist and open crusader against slavery. Men who were 
leaders in the latter cause took him to full fellowship, warmly com- 
mending his work, while as a speaker on temperance it was said that 
not even John B. Gough was more dramatic or effective. 

Charles A. Gardiner ought not to be omitted from these biographical 
sketches notwithstanding he originated just north of the border, in 
Dundee. After completing his academic studies at Malone foe took the 
full course at Hamilton College, then taught for a time, and studied 
law. Locating in ~New York city, he came to have entire charge of the 
law department of the elevated railway companies, with sixty or more 
clerks under him, and was also the personal counsel of the Goulds. He 
was regarded as one of the ablest lawyers in the State, especially in 
matters of interpretation and construction of the State and Federal 
Constitutions, and for some years preceding his death was a member of 
the board of regents of the university of New York. ■ He died in 1909, 
aged fifty-four years. 

Churches 

According to a historical sermon by one of its pastors the Baptist 
was the first church organized in Fort Covington, and dates from 1821 
or 1822, though Dr. Hough gives the date as 1824. Tt was formed by 
Rev. Nathaniel Colver, the original membership comprising but eleven 
persons if the sermon account be accepted, or nine if Dr. Hough be 
correct. The society had a comfortable growth for a few years, but was 
weakened not a little by Mr. Colver's activity and rancor in the anti- 



Fort Covington 353 

Masonic agitation. Services were held at first in the townhouse, 
schoolhouses or private residences. In 1829 a church edifice was 
erected, which was enlarged and improved and a bell purchased in 
1852. Schism arose in 1843, grow inn' out of opposing views concerning 
the pastor, and seemingly paralyzed church activities. The pastor was 
dropped from 1S-14 to 1818, when he was reinstated, and concord pre- 
vailed until 1808, when dissension again developed, but from what 
cause, to Avhat extent or with what duration docs not appear. With few 
exceptions the church had regular pastors continuously until 1882, 
when a vacancy occurred for four years, since when there have been 
many times when there was no pastor; and now, for five or six years 
past, the society has been moribund because of deaths and removals of 
members. Revivification is not contemplated. 

The story of early Presbyterianism here is obscure and complicated. 
The Associated Reformed Scotch Church had some sort of an organiza- 
tion contemporaneously with Mr. Colver's earliest labors, or possibly 
antedating them a little, under the leadership and ministration of Rev. 
" Father " Brunson or Brunton. Rev. James Erwin's autobiography 
gives him the former name, but the latter is correct. " Father " Brun- 
ton was the father of the first wife of John Burch of Malone and of 
John Brunton, who made his home in the seventies and eighties with 
Mr. Burch. He was a quaint little figure of a man, with twinkling 
eyes, always moving at a trot, and very rarely missing a Sabbath service 
or a prayer meeting at the Congregational church. Though unbalanced 
mentally, he had been highly educated, read or spoke a number of 
languages, and was encyclopedic in his fund of general information. 
Mr. Erwin pictures what seem to-day to have been amazing conditions 
as prevalent in the elder Brunton's time. Mr. Erwin's father was a 
"ruling elder" in the church, and both spiritually and socially was 
intimate with " Father " Brunton, who used to spend his Saturday 
afternoons and evenings at the Erwins' home, and upon such occasions 
invariably using the brandy decanter so freely that he was unable to 
walk home unattended — Mr. Erwin's sisters always accompanying him 
and steadying from either side. Moreover, " Father " Brunton always 
called at the Erwins' on his way to church Sabbath mornings, and drew 
upon the decanter to brace him for pulpit service. The morning sermon 
was never less than an hour and a half in length, and in the afternoon 
(which service followed after only a half hour's intermission) was still 
longer. Mr. Erwin adds that Mr. Brunton's and his father's use of 
stimulants occasioned no reflections upon them, as drinking was then 

12 



354 History of Franklin 'County 

common even among religious people. Both were accounted example9 
of righteousness, with the "moral rigidness of Puritanism," but as a 
matter of course at that time they were animated with " sectarian 
bigotry." When the younger Erwin united with the Methodists his 
father drove him from the house for no other reason, though a recon- 
ciliation was effected a little later through the influence of the mother. 
According to Dr. Hough, the Brunton regime closed about 1821, after 
which a Bev. Mr. Crosby, a teacher in an unincorporated academy in 
the place, started a Congregational church organization, which con- 
tinued weakly for a short time, and in 1827 a United Presbyterian 
church was formed by Rev. Alexander Proudfoot, from Salem, Wash- 
ington county, with Bev. John A. Savage (who became the first prin- 
cipal of the incorporated academy) as pastor. The next year the form 
of organization was changed to Presbyterian simply, and association 
effected with the Champlain Presbytery. The church edifice was 
erected about 1828 or 1829, and was rebuilt and enlarged in 1866. 

Quoting in abbreviated form from Bev. John Talbot Smith's history 
of the diocese of Ogdensburg, Cornelius, Patrick and Michael Dineen 
came to Fort Covington in 1822 from Ireland, and were soon followed 
by other Irishmen and Catholics until the number seemed in 1826 to 
warrant attention by Bev. Father Moore of Huntingdon, Que., who 
visited the place and said mass at the hotel. At rare intervals there- 
after during the next few years Father Moore or some other priest 
continued such visits, but mostly the Catholics of the place enjoyed 
their own church privileges only by journeying, always on foot, to St. 
Begis or Hogansburgh. Bev. Father McNulty of Hogansburgh organ- 
ized St. Mary's church at Fort Covington in 1837, and a church building 
was erected — the entire male Catholic population turning out for the 
work. For the next thirty-two years the parish was attended from 
Hogansburgh. The church edifice was completed through the efforts 
of Bev. James Keveney, and it was not until 1869 that the parish 
became an independent one, comprising one hundred and seventy fami- 
lies, with a resident rector. A parochial residence was bought at a cost 
of three thousand dollars, and a little later the church was given a new 
roof at about an equal expenditure. During the rectorship of Bev. 
Father Charles J. McMorrow, in 1883, a new cemetery was purchased, 
and under Bev. Father James McGowan the church was improved — a 
new floor laid, new pews put in, a tower added and the interior generally 
beautified. Father McGowan contributed two thousand dollars from 
his own means to the work, and also gave a bell. During the rectorship 



Fort Covington 355 

of Eev. Father J. L. Desjardins, which began in 1911 and still con- 
tinues, a vestry has been added to the church and $2,300 of debts paid. 
The parish includes 290 families, numbering 1,213 persons. 

So far as the records of the." First Methodist Episcopal Society in 
Fort Covington " show, the church was organized under the labors of 
Eev. Arzu J. Phelps, pastor, at a meeting held December 17, 1838, at 
the town house, " the usual place of worship," and the certificate of 
incorporation as recorded in the county clerk's office bears the same 
date. But this was by no means the beginning of Methodism in the 
town, for the conference records show the appointment in 1830 of two 
ministers to the charge, which was even then reported to have one hun- 
dred and seventy members, or nearly three times the present number. 
Yet further, we know from Eev. James Erwin that there were Methodist 
activities there at least as early as 1828, but whether under the 
care of circuit riders, local exhorters or class leaders can not now be 
told. It was in 1828 that Mr. Erwin, a mere boy, was won to the faith 
and united with the denomination at the cost of expulsion from his 
home because of the intolerance and anger of his father, who had 
designed that he should become a Presbyterian minister. While we 
have no evidence or record in the matter, it may probably be safely 
assumed, considering the then comparative importance of the place, 
that Methodist ministration began even quite a bit before Mr. Erwin's 
conversion. The explanation of formal organization having been 
delayed until 1838 is doubtless that there was at about that time a 
religious awakening of considerable proportions, as Eev. C. L. Dun- 
ning, then stationed at Malone, had been holding protracted revival 
meetings there, and had been followed in like effort by Eev. Jesse Peck 
(afterward a distinguished bishop of the church), and in 1836 the mem- 
bership had jumped to nearly three hundred, but decreased in 1838 to 
eighty-six. The church edifice was originally located a short distance 
from its present site, to which it was moved in 1838, when Warren L. 
Manning gave the lot to the society and also erected the parsonage at 
his own expense. In 1844 and 1845, for a year or two following 1866, 
and from 1877 to 1901 it was joined with Bombay as a conference 
appointment, and in 1875 with Westville Center. Otherwise it has 
always been an independent parish by itself, with no out-charge. The 
present membership is about sixty. 

Unless, as is conjectured to have been the case, army chaplains of 
the Episcopalian faith may have held services occasionally during the 
war of 1812, the first ministration with the Episcopal ritual was by 



356 History of Franklin County 

Eev. Eleazer Williams in the old town house; perhaps in the thirties, or 
possibly along toward 1850, at both of which times Mr. Williams was 
located at St. Regis or Hogansburgh. Then there was no further mani- 
festation of Episcopalianism here until about 1870, when Bev. William 
Stone Hayward, from Hogansburgh, visited the Fort occasionally, and 
held services in private residences. With the coming of the railroad in 
1883 there were accessions to the feeble few who were striving to build 
up an organization, rectors came to be engaged regularly, and services 
were held in the Masonic Hall and then in the Baptist church. The 
society's own church building was erected in 1898, and though small is 
of fine interior finish. The parish is at times without a rector, and 
even when so supplied has usually to depend upon divinity students 
from Montreal. The church numbers twenty-two members. 

Aurora Lodge, No. 383, F. and A. M., was organized in 1855. It 
has seventy-eight members, and, with the exception of the fire company, 
is the only fraternal association in the town. 

The Aetna Fire Engine Company was formed in 1850, and has nearly 
always been strong and enthusiastic both as a distinctively protective 
and as a social organization. It has a building of its own, erected in 
1900, which contains, besides quarters for apparatus, a hall for meetings 
and entertainments, a room for one of the town's polling places, and a 
store. The town contributed two thousand dollars toward the erection 
of the edifice upon condition that it be privileged to occupy a part. The 
engine of the company is of the old man-killing, hand-brakes pattern, 
and has been the only protection of property from fire ravage that the 
village has ever had, though a year or two ago seven thousand six hun- 
dred dollars was appropriated to lay adequate water mains through the 
principal streets, to be connected with a powerful force pump at the 
electric light works. Thus there will be little use hereafter for the old 
engine, as the pumping facilities will furnish several strong streams 
capable of reaching well above the highest buildings in the place. 

The Franklin County Bank at Fort Covington was incorporated by 
Lewis county men in 1840, with a capital of one hundred thousand 
dollars, with power to increase it to half a million dollars. Though 
four thousand dollars of the capital was paid in in cash and two thou- 
sand dollars in bonds deposited with the State banking department as 
security for the redemption of the circulating notes which it was 
expected to issue, the institution never opened for business. Ela Mer- 



Fort Covington 357 

riam, afterward a prominent banker at Ogdensburg, was one of the 
corporators. In those days a bank's capital was not required to be fully 
paid in, and such institutions were not infrequently of decidedly a 
speculative character, were often started by men who were not residents 
of the places where operations were to be conducted, and failures were 
in startling numbers. In the course of an excellent paper prepared a 
few years ago by Matt C. Eansom, reciting the history of banking in 
our county, it is very plausibly suggested that the organizers, though 
non-residents, were attracted to Fort Covington by reason of the fact 
that there was then no bank in the county and that the prosperity and 
natural advantages of the place seemed to carry the promise that it rnusl 
continue to hold primacy in the county as regards financial affairs and 
general importance. 

A movement was instituted about 1888 or 1889 to organize a State 
bank, but did not proceed further. 

The Fort Covington Banking Company was formed as a partnership 
in 1906 by George W. Higgins, James 1ST. MacArtney, William A. Mac- 
Artney, Elbert 0. Forbes, William G. Cusbman, James A. Smart and 
Frederic J. Dimond. Messrs. Higgins, Cushman, Dimond and Forbes 
are no longer connected with it. Requests for information addressed to 
the management have been ignored, and I am able to state only the 
general outside understanding or impressions relative to the bank's 
affairs. The nominal or perhaps the actual capital is supposed to be 
ten thousand dollars. The institution has unquestionably proved to be 
a convenience and benefit to the people of the place, and its owners are 
men of substance and general trustworthiness. It is believed also to 
be prudently and safely managed. Nevertheless the plan of organiza- 
tion is not the best for a bank, for under its operation it discloses noth- 
ing whatever relative to its condition, though appealing to the public 
for confidence and support; nor is it under any official supervision or 
subject to official examination, or required to carry any reserve. Bank- 
ing on such lines in cities is absolutely prohibited by law except in 
instances where individual deposits are each in a large amount, and 
therefore presumably made by men who are competent to safeguard 
their own interests without State intervention. Yet again, the incor- 
porated bank has to pay taxes on every dollar of its capital and sur- 
plus, while the private banker is apt to escape all assessment except 
upon his real estate. That is the case with the Fort Covington Banking 
Company, which, for some unexplained reason, is not assessed at all on 
its personalty. 



358 History of Franklin County 

Though advantageously located in many respects, with fine highways 
leading to many attractive points within reasonable distances, and with 
waterways that invite delightful trips by sail or motor boat to beautiful 
islands in the St. Lawrence and to interesting shore places in Canada, 
Fort Covington is unfortunate in that the configuration and conditions 
of the adjacent country permit no possibility of a gravity system of 
water-works based upon a supply from springs. Cisterns and wells have 
always had to be depended upon for water for domestic uses, and so, 
of course, few of the residences have bath-rooms or toilet facilities, nor 
is there any general sewerage system. Were there water-works, even 
with no better water than flows in the river, and sewers, there should 
be no reason why the village might not have a finely appointed summer 
hotel well filled with guests through the season, and become also a 
center of fine vacation homes of wealthy people from Montreal and 
cities of our own country. It would be an admirable point as well, with 
its historic associations and varied natural attractions, for summer 
schools. It is regrettable that enterprise and capital are not enlisted to 
provide what the village needs in the regards indicated. Lacking these, 
there seems to be no promise of large growth or of especial prosperity 
for the place. 



CHAPTER XVI 
FRANKLIN 

The town of Franklin was erected from Bellmont May 20, 1836, and 
comprises about half of township number nine and all of township 
number ten of the Old Military Tract. In area it is the third largest 
town in the county, containing more than one hundred and five thou- 
sand acres. Many lakes or ponds dot its surface, and the two branches 
of the Saranac river run through it, affording a number of excellent 
water powers. As illustrative of the size of the town, the story is told that 
one of the early supervisors, journeying to Malone to attend his first 
session of the board, after having driven all day, arrived at a primitive 
hotel, inquired what town he was in, and was amazed to learn that he 
had not yet Avholly traversed his own. The anecdote is illuminative 
of Franklin's broad reaches, and not less of the horrible highways that 
used to characterize it. The town is of rugged surface, its once mag- 
nificent forests now largely gone into lumber, pulp- wood and charcoal, 
or ravaged by fire. The character of its soil and its altitude make it 
impossible that it should ever become important agriculturally, and the 
waste of its timber in the past precludes extensive lumbering operations, 
so that such growth as may yet come to it must be through the estab- 
lishment of summer hotels and sanatoria. It had a population of less 
than two hundred when formed, which had increased to eleven hundred 
in 1860 and to fifteen hundred in 1900. It is now 1,378. Among 
early settlers were a not inconsiderable number of escaped or eman- 
cipated slaves, who were provided with homesteads by Gerrit Smith, 
the form of wliose grants to these and to poor white men whom he 
recruited from the cities is interesting. It names in each as the con- 
sideration " one dollar " and the grantor's desire " to have all share in 
the means of subsistence and happiness which a bountiful God has pro- 
vided for all." 

The first settlement in Franklin was made in 1827 by Isaac G. 
McLenathan and William Wells, from Jay, Essex county, at the place 
now known as Franklin Falls, but from 1827 to 1851 called McLena- 
than Falls. Here they erected a saw mill and an iron forge, and almost 
at the same time another forge was built by Uriah Sumner a few miles 
west, at or near Bloomingdale. This latter had only a very brief life, 

[359] 



360 History of Franklin 'County 

nor were the enterprises of McLenathan & Wells enduring or successful, 
largely because of their remoteness from markets. All lumber and iron 
output had to be hauled by team to Port Kent, a distance of thirty-four 
miles. In later years a plank road, with toll gates, was built between the 
points named, and was kept up until about 1875. In the course of a 
few years after the inception of operations by McLenathan & Wells 
their industries had become inactive, and the place was all but aban- 
doned. Operations under new management were resumed in 1846, how- 
ever, William V. K. McLean and John Fitzgerald, also Essex county 
men, having taken over the properties. The story of the forge subse- 
quent to McLenathan & Wells's operation of it is not now ascertainable 
with certainty, but from the best information that I can gather it 
seems probable that the building did not exist after 1847. In that 
year a deed of the lot on which the forge was located refers to the forge 
as if it were then standing, but no subsequent conveyance of the prem- 
ises makes any mention of the establishment, and certainly the reports 
of the great fire which wiped out everything in 1852 do not specify a 
forge as among the buildings burned. It is, therefore, to be presumed 
that about 1847 the forge disappeared to make room for a saw mill. 
Keese & Tomlinson became associated with McLean & Fitzgerald here 
about 1848 for a year or two, and at about the same time Peter Corn- 
stock, from Port Kent, appears to have become the working head of the 
business, but wdiether as superintendent, lessee or proprietor I am unable 
to ascertain. James B. Dickinson and George Tremble, both men of 
character and good abilities, came to the place, the former in 1850 and 
the latter in 1852. Associated with Mr. Dickinson was James H. 
Pierce, who became our county's Assemblyman twenty years later, and 
afterward represented Essex county in the same body. For a good many 
years Mr. Pierce made up and led to Pepublican county conventions 
the delegates from all of the "south towns," viz., Brighton, Franklin 
and Harrietstown, and sometimes from Duane also. Often they came 
without caucuses having been held at all, and with credentials prepared 
en route. It is worth noting also that in 1871, when Tweed lacked 
one vote in the Assembly to pass his New York city charter, he finally 
obtained it by the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Orange 
S. Winans, of Chautauqua county; but the offer had first been made 
to Mr. Pierce, and turned down by him. Pierce & Dickinson operated 
at Franklin Falls as merchants, and they also had a forge in Essex 
county on the line between Jay and Keene. In addition, Mr. Dickinson 
w T as interested in the mill at Franklin Falls. 



Franklin 361 

Besides the mill McLenathan Falls had a rather pretentious hotel 
and a large store. These and every other structure except one small 
shanty were wiped out by a forest lire in May. 1852, which a high wind 
swept down upon the place from the hills. So rapidly and fiercely did 
the flames spread that fowls, dogs and cattle perished in the streets, 
and the inhabitants themselves barely escaped with their lives. House- 
hold goods, merchandise in the store, large quantities of lumber, and 
even the unsubmerged parts of wagons that had been hauled into the 
river were all destroyed. Twenty-three dwellings were burned, and the 
first estimate of loss was one hundred thousand dollars, which, however, 
revised figures somewhat reduced. The place was rebuilt under the 
leadership of Peter Comstock, though apparently McKean still retained 
some interest in the works, for two years later he executed a general 
assignment for the benefit of his creditors, in which he conveyed all his 
right, title and interest in and to mills, store, etc., at Franklin Falls. 
In 1859 Mr. Tomlinson acquired the business and properties, and the 
next year the firm of Tomlinson & Tremble was formed to operate 
them. The mill was repaired and worked by this concern for five years, 
when they sold to Christopher F. Xorton, of Plattsburgh, who for four- 
teen years made Franklin Falls the headquarters for his extensive lum- 
bering operations on both the north and south branches of the Saranac, 
and covering almost all of Franklin and Brighton and the north part of 
Harrietstown. "While he cut some lumber at various mills in Franklin, 
the larger part of his logs were floated to Plattsburgh and sawed there. 
Later the power at Franklin Falls was bought by Dr. S. W. Dodge, who 
afterward removed to Massena, and the mill was rebuilt and run by him 
for a few years. 

The mills at Franklin Falls are now only a memory, but they have 
been succeeded by a more important enterprise, for here is one of the 
power development plants of the Paul Smith Electric Light, Power and 
Railroad Company, which, with a companion plant at Union Falls (just 
on the border between Franklin and Black Brook in Clinton county), 
develops five thousand horse power for transmission over many miles 
of wire through the southern part of our county and into Essex and 
Clinton, to light villages, operate a railroad, and supply energy for 
manufacturing purposes. The money outlay for construction has been 
very great, and the business done is extensive. 

The landlords who conducted the hotel at Franklin Falls after 
McLenathan have been: Peter Hewitt. Hugh Martin, Varnum Hewitt, 
H. Eice, Herrick Bromley, Lewis L. Smith, Alonzo Moody, Isaiah 



362 History of Franklin 'County 

Vosburgh, S. W. Dodge, Norman I. Arnold and Patsy O'Neil. The latter's 
widow now conducts it, but the location is nothing like what it used to 
be for hotel business. Fifty years ago the Saranac and St. Eegis lakes 
country had no railroads running to it, and were accessible to visiting 
sportsmen and pleasure seekers only by stage or private conveyance 
from Malone or from Lake Champlain ports. Most of the travel was 
via the latter, and it all passed through Franklin Falls and Blooming- 
dale, making Franklin Falls an exceptionally good hotel point. While 
L. L. Smith was landlord there he served dinners during the summer 
months to from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty guests daily. 

There have been many saw mills in Franklin other than those at 
Franklin Falls, but none of them large — the vast timber cut of the 
region having been floated for the most part down the Saranac river 
to Plattsburgh, and sawed there. Lumbering here and in adjacent towns 
forty or fifty years ago (principally by Mr. Norton and the Turners) 
was on a larger scale than anything of the kind known in this county 
prior to the coming of Mr. Hurd and Mr. Ducey to Waverly and Santa 
Clara, and unquestionably Franklin would be to-day a much richer town 
(and the estates of the lumbermen larger as well) if such operations 
had never been had. Charcoal burning by Bowen & Signor at Slab 
Bridge, below Hunters' Home, and the shipping of pulp-wood have also 
contributed a good deal to the deforestation of the town. 

Probably next in importance to the Franklin Falls operations were 
those of Thomas Goldsmith, who acquired over fourteen thousand acres 
from Gerrit Smith for $20,891, and who had mills at the Flood Dam 
(a mile above Thatcherville), at Goldsmith's, at Alder Brook, and also 
at a number of points in Clinton county, just over the Franklin line. 
He was forced to an assignment in 1846, but continued to run his mills 
for the assignee for a number of years afterward. In 1856 his lands, 
then comprising 13,890 acres, were sold by the assignee to Daniel Eob- 
inson and John A. Griswold of Troy, who twenty-odd years later dis- 
posed of them to Patrick Hanlon and Bowen & Signor. The mill at 
Goldsmith's did only custom work during the period of the Eobinson- 
Griswold ownership, and was run by Amos Lamson, James Davis and 
others. H. L. Wait built a steam mill at this place eight or ten years 
ago, and operated it until his death in the early part of 1915 — hauling 
his product to the railroad at Loon Lake with a traction engine. The 
Wait mill still stands, but is idle. 

A mill was built at Thatcherville, three miles above Hunters' Home, 
about 1840 by Avery Thatcher, and a dozen years later Allan Com- 



Franklin 363 

stock rebuilt on the same site for his father, Peter, of Franklin Falls. 
Litigation tied up the property, however, and the mill never did any 
work. The writer remembers visiting it in 1863, when it had become 
a wreck. About 1879 or 1880 Albert Turner rebuilt it, and ran it for 
two or three years — finally selling it to the Hartw T ells of Plattsbnrgh. 
The mill and the houses belonging with it have been swept away by 
fire, and the site is now owned by the International Paper Company. 

A mill was built at Mud pond about 1840 by Leander Cadwell, of 
Black Brook, and Lawrence Myers, of Plattsbnrgh. Jackson & Goff 
afterward became interested in it, and then L. L. Smith, about 1870, 
ran it to get out lumber for rebuilding Hunters' Home. 

Monroe Hall, of Plattsbnrgh, put up and operated a mill on the 
outlet of Loon Lake about 1810; Matt. Fox had a mill at Alder Brook, 
and Russell French one at " French's " about 1863 or 1864. Harry B. 
Hatch, who w r as Franklin's first supervisor, and who kept a hotel on 
the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, north of Loon Lake and twenty- 
five miles south of Malone, built a saw mill and ran it for several years. 
The place was subsequently owned and occupied by Richard L. Ross, 
who was an expert chemist and a gentleman of fine education, formerly 
of Albany. The property was dissipated, a splendid library hawked 
about Malone book by book, and the place w T ent to ruin. But about 
1900 Warren B. Walker built a steam mill there, and for seven years 
cut two and a half million feet of lumber annually — removing the 
mill to Kempton in Duane when the supply of timber had been 
exhausted. 

Something like twenty years ago the Kinsley Lnmber Companv 
w r as organized by Arthur Leonard and Frank Smith (who were con- 
nected with the New York Central Railroad) and John O'Rourke, and 
built a mill two miles west of Onchiota. It burned. The same interests 
also built a railroad from a point north of Tnman (Loon Lake Station) 
four miles west to the DeBar Mountain tract for hauling timber and 
pulp-wood, which was operated for several years. The lumber interests 
of the Kinsley Company passed to Baker Brothers of Plattsbnrgh. and 
the lumber railroad to the Delaware and Hudson. When the latter com- 
pany was expecting to gain control of the New York and Ottawa it was 
intended to utilize this link by extending it to Santa Clara or St. Regis 
Falls as a connection between the two systems. But control of the New 
York and Ottawa went to the New York Central, and thus this lumber 
railroad is now an abandoned property and hardly more than a memory. 

After the burning of the Kinsley mill Warren B. Walker wenl to 
Onchiota and built a steam mill there about 1910, cutting three million 



364 History of Franklin County 

feet the first year, and later sold to Baker Brothers. They have since 
sold to the Plattsburgh Dock and Coal Company, which now operates 
the mill. 

A mill for cutting hard wood was erected by the International Paper 
Company between Loon Lake and Kushaqua in 1915, and is now in 
operation. This and the Lock and Coal Company's are the only mills 
now running in the town. 

A Mr. Pay built a saw mill at Vermontville in 1848, which was 
afterward owned in turn by Isaac Lyon, B. F. Lamson, Chauncey 
Williamson, Norman and Charles Arnold, C. C. Whittelsey of Malone, 
and Dr. S. W. Dodge. Mr. Whittelsey ran it for two years with H. J. 
Hathaway in charge. Another mill in the same vicinity was built in 
1850 by Curtis Avery; it was subsequently owned by C. N. Parks, and 
then by L. S. Bryant. Neither of these properties is now in existence. 
Vermontville had a foundry also from 1861 to about 1889. It was 
built by Eli and Norman I. Arnold, Chauncey Williamson and Albert 
Keith. Except during the period of his absence in the army it was 
operated for the greater part of the time until 1870 by Norman I. 
Arnold. H. J. Hathaway then bought it, and ran it for eight or nine 
years, until the advent of the Chateaugay Railway brought competition 
which he could not meet. The product of the establishment was chiefly 
plows, cultivators, scrapers, etc., and for years is supplied about all of 
these that were used in Franklin, Ilarrietstown and Brighton, besides a 
good many in Essex and Clinton counties. 

Captain James H. Pierce of Franklin, and P. H. Shields of Malone, 
in 1873 built and for three or four years operated a starch mill at 
Vermontville. 

Innkeepers in Franklin at an early day, additional to those named 
as having been located at Franklin Falls, were : Samuel and Russell 
French at French's, now Forestdale ; John Littlejohn at Alder Brook ; 
Prentis Lovering (" Print") at Loon Lake; William Squires at a point 
a mile or two north ; Harry B. Hatch at Hatch's ; Paul Smith and Lewis 
L. Smith at Hunters' Home, since burned; and John R. Merrill at 
Merrillsville. The hotel at the latter place was later conducted by Mr. 
Merrill's son, William, and by his son-in-law, William J. Ayers and 
Charles B. Lyman, and then by James W. Littlejohn. There is no 
hotel at this point at present. These inns, or, in the vernacular of the 
day, "taverns," were mostly on the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike, 
over which there was a good deal of teaming three-quarters of a century 
ago, and their guests were generally teamsters who stopped only for a 
meal or for a night, and the rates were next to nothing. 



Franklin 365 

Jn splendid contrast to these rink' and primitive places, S >f them 

merely small log cabins, both as regards the character of structure and 
of guests, is the Loon Lake House, which represents an investment of 
probably close to half a million dollars, and offers to sportsmen and 
pleasure seekers a class of entertainment nowhere surpassed in the 
Adirondacks. Mr. Ferd W. Chase came from Vermont in L878, and 
erected a hotel which contained thirty-one sleeping rooms. It was 
opened to accommodate a few fishing parties in May, 1879, though the 
formal opening did not occur until the sixth of July. Its high num- 
ber of guests in that year, on Augusl first, was Bixty-one. From thai 
date to the present it has grown almost every season both in capacity 
and popularity, though in the first years taxing Mr. Chase's resources 
and credit to the uttermost. The property includes a tract of over 
four thousand acres of land, a main hotel building of imposing appear- 
ance and large capacity, two annexes, a number of cottages, boat houses, 
etc. In addition there are a number of privately owned cottages adja- 
cent, which are in effect a part of the establishment. One of these is 
reputed to have cost its owner no less than three hundred thousand dol- 
lars. How enterprising and unsparing of expense the management has 
been in seeking to make the hotel perfect in all its details is shown by 
the improvements that it has provided. There is a private acetylene gas 
plant for lighting the place; a system of water supply having a head of 
one hundred and twenty-six feet, with two mains leading from a pure 
spring to the hotel and other buildings, in which there are stand-pipes 
and fire-hose always ready for use in case of emergency. Even greater 
care has been had to provide safe and scientific sewerage. The sewage 
is carried to the hotel farm, located the other side of a hill three-fifths 
of a mile away, through two lines of twelve-inch tile that are laid 
through a tunnel which at one point is ninety-two feet deep. This 
tunnel alone cost five dollars a lineal foot for driving through earth and 
ten dollars through rock. There are golf grounds, a tennis court, pool 
and billiard parlors, a bowling alley, a livery containing horses and 
carriages and automobiles, and almost every other accessory for enter- 
tainment of visitors. The grounds are beautifully kept, and the same 
purpose to give guests the very best that can be provided is manifest 
within the house, as without. The table leaves nothing to he desired, 
and the service is up to the highest standard. The hotel, annexes and 
cottages will accommodate five hundred guests or more, and so admir- 
ably is it managed that the problem never is how to fill it, but how to 
care for all who apply for rooms. Mrs. Chase's personality, energy and 



366 History of Franklin 'County 

executive genius are in no small measure responsible for the success and 
popularity that the house enjoys. The hotel and hotel farm employ 
about three hundred persons. 

The time when cases of tuberculosis, even in the incipiency of the 
disease, were deemed incurable and hopeless is not far in the past; but, 
praise be to Dr. Loomis, Dr. Edward L. Trudeau and others who gave 
their lives to a study of the scourge and to devising measures for its 
prevention and treatment, that view no longer holds, or at least not 
as to tuberculosis in its early stages. And the wilderness of Northern 
New York has had no insignificant part in establishing the new gospel 
that dry mountain air, the balsamic fragrance of the forests, with 
nutritious food, due care, rest, proper sanitation and observance of well 
established rules for bodily care and prevention of infection, may even 
stamp out the disease utterly. Actuated by the proof afforded in a mul- 
titude of individual instances and by the cumulative results realized at 
the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium at Trudeau, near Saranac Lake, that 
life in the region, with proper care and treatment, held the promise of 
arresting the affliction even in advanced cases, and of effecting a positive 
cure if taken in time, a considerable number of philanthropic men and 
women — most of them residents of the city of New York, many of 
them wealthy, and all prominent socially — determined some fifteen years 
ago to found an institution for the treatment of incipient tuberculosis 
in working women and children, which should be non-sectarian, and 
which, while receiving patients who are able to pay, should be open also, 
and without charge, to those who have no means. The names of these 
deserve a place in this sketch. They are : Robert Collyer, Henry B. 
Barnes, Jas. E. Newcomb, Geo. F. Shrady, Chas. M. Cauldwell, 
Chas. H. Knight, R. Maclay Bull, Frederic B. Jennings, Edgar L. 
Marston, Jacob H. Schiff, Robert W. de Forest, Robert Stuart Mac- 
Arthur, Felix Adler, Lelia Howard Webb, Robert P. Cornell, Emile 
R. Rogers, Elizabeth W. Newcomb, Hester E. Shrady, Gertrude 
Shipman Burr, Edith M. Phelps Stokes, Alice Brevoort Bull, Pauline 
Scholle Bier, Elizabeth M. Cauldwell, Mary Potter Geer, Rose McAllis- 
ter Coleman, Caroline Starin Carroll, Luck MacKenzie Knight, Caroline 
S. Spencer and Louise Pierpont Satterlee. 

The name chosen for the institution was Stony Wold Sanatorium. 
The date of incorporation was April 10, 1001, and eight months later 
property consisting of twelve hundred and fifty acres, situate near Lake 
Kushaqua, in the town of Franklin, and having an elevation of over 
seventeen hundred feet above sea level, was purchased. Building opera- 



Franklin 367 

tions were begun as soon afterward as practicable, and the institution 
was formally opened August 15, 1903. Where there had been only an 
unbroken forest there have risen an administrative building with dormi- 
tory adjoining; Stony Wold Hall, a building for purposes of worship and 
for entertainments; a dormitory for the help; a woodworking shop; a 
store and post-office; five rest shacks; one industrial settlement house; 
seven cottages; a power house for generating electricity for lighting the 
institution; an outdoor school; and a model cow barn, stable and pig- 
gery. A farm has also been developed. The administration building 
alone cost eighty-four thousand dollars, and the entire property is valued 
at $302,435.16, and is not mortgaged. The institution has, besides, an 
endowment fund of $64,258,75. 

The corporation has fifteen auxiliaries with a total membership of 
nineteen hundred. In the beginning each auxiliary contributed six 
hundred dollars to build and equip a room, and pledged itself to sup- 
port thereafter an occupant, the charge for which is fourteen dollars 
per week. Further funds for building, equipment and maintenance were 
realized from subscriptions, and also considerable amounts from fairs 
and entertainments given at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and other places 
in New York and at the institution itself. 

Mrs. James Edward Xewcomb is the president of the board of trus- 
tees, and has served in that capacity from the beginning. She was the 
originator of the enterprise, and devised the plan of organization. She 
spends a good deal of time at Lake Kushaqua, and is constant and 
untiring in effort on its behalf. 

Stony Wold has a capacity for twenty children and ninety-three 
adults and is practically always full. No children under the age of six 
years are admitted. The staff includes the physician in charge (who is 
at present Dr. Malcolm D. Lent), an assistant physician (Dr. W. G. 
Milan), a number of nurses, a dietician, a storekeeper, an outside super- 
intendent (Albert E. Pave), and other workers averaging between ninety 
and one hundred in number. 

Stony Wold Hall is used by the Episcopalian, the Catholic and the 
Jewish denominations, though none of them has a resident preacher. The 
Episcopalians and the Jews use one room in common, and the Catholics 
have a part of the structure separately. When the hall is wanted for a 
card party or for a dance, the seats are removed, and a room nicely 
adapted to the purpose is available. 

The institution is doing a magnificent work, and hundreds who have 
enjoyed care in it, gaining strength and vigor, and enabled to return 



368 History of Franklin County 

to life's duties and labors with new hope and courage, bless daily the 
philanthropists who have given so fine an institution to the world, and 
who cause it to be managed with such care and loving kindness. 

Paul C. Ransom, a graduate of Williams College, having been com- 
pelled by failing health to relinquish the practice of law in Buffalo, 
turned in 1897 to the work of fitting boys for college, and in 1903 estab- 
lished the Adirondack-Florida School, which holds its spring and 
autumn terms on Eainbow lake, near Onchiota, and a winter term at 
Cocoanut Grove, Florida. A school building or lodge was erected at 
the former place in 1906 at a cost of $15,000, and a number of cabins 
and other structures have been added since. Mr. Eansom died in 1907, 
when Mrs. Eansom assumed charge, and has since conducted the school, 
with L. H. Somers, a Yale man, as headmaster. Of Mr. Eansom it is 
said that his quiet influence over boys was wonderful, and that he was 
" a rare master, and a rarer friend." Originally the school was planned 
to accommodate twenty pupils, but now has a capacity for thirty; and 
inasmuch as it is believed that the best results are attainable only with 
a small enrollment no effort is likely to be made for further enlarge- 
ment. The Eainbow Lake branch is called Meenahga Lodge. The 
school is intended to give boys the best advantages attainable in the way 
of individual attention and wholesome surroundings, the opportunity 
to pursue a course of study in preparation for college, and at the same 
time the benefit of outdoor life under the most favorable climatic con- 
ditions. Invalid boys or those suffering from any organic disease are 
not received. A chief aim of the school is the cultivation of character, 
and particular attention is given also to outdoor sports and physical 
training. The charge for tuition and care is $1,600 per pupil per year, 
which does not include traveling expenses, text books or stationery, and 
no deductions are allowed for absence, withdrawal or dismissal. The 
naked statement of terms is evidence that only the sons or wards of 
wealthy people are included among the pupils, who come from all parts 
of the United States. The school's standing is very high, and it has 
the unqualified indorsement of eminent educators and of many distin- 
guished men whose sons have been among its pupils. 

The Chateaugay Eailway and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence Rail- 
way enter Franklin at nearly the same point, in the vicinity of Pluma- 
dore pond, on the northern central border of the town, and, trending 
a little to the west, parallel each other to Onchiota, whence the former 
continues almost due south to Saranac lake, while the latter swings 
westward into Brighton. The former was built as far as Loon Lake in 






Franklin 369 

1886, and extended on through the town a year or so later. The St. Law- 
rence and Adirondack was built in 1892. Each of these roads has a sta- 
tion at Loon Lake (three miles from the Loon Lake House), at Lake 
Kushaqua and at Onchiota, and the Chateaugay has one also for the 
hamlet of Vermontville, two or three miles distant therefrom. 

Franklin has more small settlements and separate post-offices in 
proportion to its population than any other town in the county. They 
are: Inman, Loon Lake, Goldsmith's, Forestdale, Alder Brook, Frank- 
lin Falls, Pine Park or Onchiota, Lake Kushaqua and Vermontville. 
Merrillsville was formerly a post-office. Union Falls is partly in Frank- 
lin and partly in Clinton county, the post-office of that name being just 
over the line in Clinton. Not all of these are even hamlets, some of 
them being merely neighborhoods a little more closely settled than the 
surrounding country. 

Inman lies a little to the west and north of the center of the town, 
and consists only of the two depots of the Chateaugay Railway and the 
Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railway, three or four dwelling houses, 
a store, and a small hotel, built by Deming M. Roberts, formerly of 
Malone and Chateaugay, and now kept by William DesChamps. 

Loon Lake is three miles distant, and between the two points the town 
built a macadam highway a year or two ago at a cost of thirteen thou- 
sand dollars, an expenditure that would have horrified the earlier resi- 
dents. At Loon Lake there are only the group of buildings comprising 
the Loon Lake Hotel and cottages, and the store and dwelling house of 
Fremont F. Smith. 

Forestdale, formerly known as " French's," is in the extreme south- 
eastern part of the town, and has a post-office, a store, a Catholic 
church, and a few residences. It formerly had a hotel. 

Onchiota or Pine Park is in the western part, and is a small settle- 
ment, with store, post-office, two railway stations, a saw mill, and a 
club house or hotel now in course of construction by the Rainbow Club 
and Improvement Company. Several thousand young pine trees have 
been set out here within the past year or two by the same corporation as 
a step in reforestation, and the state is planting hundreds of thousands 
of young spruce and pine in the same locality. 

Lake Kushaqua, also in the western part, is exclusively the home 
of Stony Wold Sanatorium, through the establishment of which in L901 
the place came into being. 

Goldsmith's is on the North Branch of the Saranac river about five 
miles below Hunters' Home, and is only the site of an old saw mill 



370 History of Franklin County 

and a lumber camp. To it and beyond, to the Clinton county line, a 
highway is soon to be built from Hunters' Home, which will cost over 
eighty thousand dollars. 

Franklin Falls has already been sufficiently described. 

Vermontville is the largest hamlet in the town, and yet now has no 
industries except farming. The place has two churches, a post-office and 
a store or two. 

Merrillsville is south and east of the center, and consists only of a 
small group of dwelling houses and a church. 

Sugar Bush, so named because of the large quantity of maple sugar 
formerly made there, and still retaining the name though scarcely any 
sugar is made at present, is a string of farm houses stretching over a 
mile or two. 

Alder Brook, named for the brook that runs through it, is a couple 
of miles east of Merrillsville, and is the same character of place as Sugar 
Bush. The two were among the earliest localities in the town to be 
settled, the settlers coming mostly from Vermont and Clinton and 
Essex counties. 

Though a considerable proportion of the early settlers in Franklin 
were of the Roman Catholic faith, these were dependent for nearly a 
quarter of a century for enjoyment of the services of their own church 
upon Keeseville and the mission at Bedford, which involved several 
miles of travel. Nevertheless interest so grew that at length a mission 
was established at Union Falls, and not long afterward, in 1854, Father 
James Keveney built a church at the place now known as Catholic Cor- 
ners, which lies between Alder Brook and Union Falls. It was blessed 
under the name St. Rosa's of Lima, and has since been maintained. 
Incorporation was not effected, however, until fifty years later, with 
the bishop, the vicar general, the rector (Rev. Father Richard O'Don- 
nell), Edward McKillip and Peter A. Tracy as trustees. Father O'Don- 
nell is still the rector, and the church has nearly four hundred members. 

Vermontville has a Methodist Episcopal church and an Episcopalian 
chapel, known as St. Paul's. The latter is supplied irregularly by the 
rector resident at Bloomingdale. Apparently the first religious organiza- 
tion was of a union order, which was for a long time without statutory 
incorporation, though the records of the Presbytery of Champlain show 
a Presbyterian society at Vermontville in 1860. A church building 
had been erected in 1856, and a friend who was then and still is a resi- 
dent there writes me that it was a Methodist Episcopal church, though 
Presbyterians helped to build it. It was to be open for use by any 



Franklin ■ 371 

denomination, but with preferential claim to occupancy belonging to the 
Methodists. There has always been a good deal of church friction here, 
It would seem that, besides the Episcopalians, the place has had in 
turn religious organizations of the union order, Presbyterian, Wesleyan 
and Methodist Episcopal. The Presbyterian must have been feeble and 
of short duration. The Wesleyan Methodists held the field principally 
from 1876 to 1896. The Union Evangelical church was incorporated 
in 1888, and the Methodist Episcopal not until 1895. In 1897 the Union 
Evangelical church deeded the house of worship to the Wesleyan Meth- 
odist church, which ten years later deeded it to the Methodist Episcopal 
church. The latter is, except for the Episcopalians, in sole occupancy 
of the field. 

A Methodist Episcopal organization has existed at Merrillsville for 
three-quarters of a century or more, supplied at first by the pastor of 
the church at Saranac, and now Yermontville. The present church 
edifice at this point was built about twenty years ago. 

Notice that an application would be made to the supervisors to divide 
the town was published in 1859. The new town, to consist of the west 
half, was to be called Concord. But there was not town concord in the 
matter, and the project died without even having been presented to the 
supervisors. The opposition was political. 

John B. Secor, a horse buyer from Westchester county, was shot and 
killed in the town of Franklin, between Hatch's and Loon Lake, June 
6, 1853, by James Madison Bickford of Dickinson. Bickford was at 
a prayer meeting at the latter place when he saw Secor and a com- 
panion ride past, and, leaving the meeting, persuaded Thomas Cook, a 
mere boy, to accompany him, and followed the men, whom they passed 
somewhere in Duane. At the point of the tragedy in Franklin they 
awaited the appearance of Secor and his companion, and upon their 
arrival Bickford, in ambush at the side of the road, took Secor's life. 
The companion fled and gave the alarm. Bickford and Cook were 
apprehended the next day in Burke, the former having Secor's purse 
and watch in his possession. On the trial, a year later, Secor's friend 
identified Bickford and Secor's property, and conviction was a matter 
of course. Bickford was hung September 22, 1854, and his father 
denounced the execution as a murder. Cook wished to plead guilty, but 
a trial was insisted upon by the court, resulting in a conviction and 
a death sentence — which was commuted to life imprisonment, with a 
pardon granted later. Cook returned to Dickinson, married, and one 
night, forty-odd years ago, when he was in bed and asleep some one 
placed a keg of powder under the bed, and fired it. Cook was killed. 



CHAPTER XVII 
HARRIETSTOWN 

Harrietstown was erected from Duane March 19, 1841, and included 
originally three townships. A township and a half taken from Brandon 
was added in 1883. It has 134,247 assessed acres, is mountainous in 
considerable part, contains many lakes and ponds, and has only a com- 
paratively small area, in the northern section, that is adapted, to agri- 
culture, the pursuit of which is heavily handicapped by early and late 
frosts. Among the larger waters are Lower and Middle Saranac lakes, 
a part of each of Upper Saranac and Upper St. Regis, and Lake Clear. 
The more noteworthy of the smaller waters are Ampersand, Follansby, 
Colby, Oseetah, Lake Flower and Kiwassa (formerly Lonesome). Lake 
Flower is an expansion of the Saranac river, and lies within the cor- 
porate limits of Saranac Lake village. On the shores of these several waters 
are many summer hotels and wilderness cottages or camps, some of which 
represent the expenditure of many thousand dollars and reflect a 
wealth of care and adornment of grounds that make them exceedingly 
attractive. The only considerable stream in the town is the Saranac 
river, which takes a tortuous course of perhaps six or eight miles through 
the eastern and northern part before passing into Essex county. The 
Chateaugay Railroad runs for five or six miles almost along the eastern 
boundary before swinging to its terminus at Lake Placid; the Paul 
Smith Electric Railway runs northerly from Lake Clear Junction into 
Brighton ; and the main line of the Adirondack and St. Lawrence 
extends in a southwesterly direction for five or six miles through the 
northern part, with a branch running from Lake Clear to Saranac Lake 
village. 

The town takes its name from Harriet, eldest daughter of William 
Constable and wife of James Duane. Hough's story attributes its 
erection to pique on the part of Major Duane, occasioned by a vote at 
the town meeting in 1840 providing that the next such meeting be held 
at Saranac Lake, thirty-odd miles distant from Major Duane's home. 
Hough states that this action w r as accomplished through an unusual and 
unexpected attendance at the meeting by so many voters from Saranac 
Lake that they had control; and that, resenting the procedure and 
resolved not to be inconvenienced again by having to drive a long dis- 

[372] 



Harrietstown 373 

tance in order to attend an election, Major Dnane forced a partition of 
the town against the wish and remonstrance of the Saranac Lake people. 
But inasmuch as Major Duane was continued as supervisor in is 11. 
which would hardly have been the case if there had really been serious 
friction between the two sections of the town. I think that the Hough 
account should be received with some degree of allowance. 

Another town meeting story runs that in early days, when it was 
the custom of every elector to go to the polls in the morning, and stay 
through until the votes had been counted, the canvass showed upon one 
such occasion something like twenty Democratic ballots to one lone 
Whig, whereupon Captain Pliny Miller, for many years the political 
autocrat of Harrietstown, forbade announcement of the result, insisting 
that some one had made a mistake, and that the vote must be retaken. 
After everybody had voted a second time, the count showed twenty-one 
straight Democratic ballots, which, naturally, was sufficient and satis- 
factory. Still another anecdote with a political tang represents that a 
visitor once reminded Milote Baker as he closed his store for the night 
that he had neglected to lock the door, to which Mr. Baker responded 
that it was quite unnecessary to fasten anything since there was not a 
Whig in town. 

Settlement in Harrietstown began prior to 1820, but was of slow 
development for sixty years or more, as census figures show: 

1845 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1905 1910 1915 
129 181 340 416 533 1582 3390 4133 4755 4716 

While the figures for 1915 are slightly below those for 1910 it is 
claimed that the decrease is apparent only, due to the fact that in the 
one case visitors were erroneously enumerated, while in the other none 
but actual, permanent residents were counted. The number of aliens is 
returned as 218. 

Though Jacob Moody is said to have located in that part of Saranac 
Lake village which lies in I-Cssex comity as early as 1819, and Isaac 
Livingston at about the same time near West Harrietstown, Pliny Miller 
was the first settler on the Saranac river in Harrietstown. lie bad com- 
manded a militia company from the vicinity of Troy in the war of L812, 
and on his way with his command to duty at Fort Covington had been 
persuaded by a relative at Keeseville to buy a Large tract of land in Wil- 
mington, to which he removed at the close of the war. and engaged in 
lumbering. The failure of a Montreal concern which bad contracted 
for his output involved him so seriously that be bad to close out his 



374 History of Franklin 'County 

Wilmington properties, after which he established himself, in 1828, at 
Saranac Lake, where at two dollars per acre he bought a three-hundred 
acre tract, on which is now located a considerable part of the village. 
Here he again engaged in lumbering. For more than thirty years he 
was the town's foremost and most influential citizen. His residence was 
near the present power house, across the river from the village office, on 
what is now the Miles-Tucker place. One biographical sketch repre- 
sents him as having kept a tavern, but his descendants do not under- 
stand that he ever engaged in such business beyond having perhaps 
occasionally accommodated a traveler in his home. He was, however, 
the owner and probably the builder of the hotel which stood on the site 
of the village office, which was burned in 1856, and which was run by 
various lessees, including Wm. F. Martin and Virgil C. Bartlett. In 
1859 Captain Miller removed to Wilmington, where he died a year 
later at the age of eighty-five years. He was a man of indomitable will, 
forceful energy and enterprise, and public spirited. For a number of 
years he was supervisor, and when he did not hold the office himself 
usually determined the man who did. The late Milo B. Miller and 
Seaver A. Miller, both gentlemen of character and substance and of 
large usefulness, are among his descendants. Hilyer Miller, the father 
of Milo, was the first merchant in the village, though of course in a 
very small way; and Van Buren, the father of Seaver, was often super- 
visor, was more familiar with town affairs and in his time more useful 
in a public way, than any other resident. With the paucity of people 
and with no local industries of consequence, the life and business of the 
locality were long insignificant in volume, though some of the incidents 
of the earlier time are interesting. 

Milote Baker opened a boarding house or hotel and store in 1851 about 
a mile below the village, but in Essex county. He was a natural host, and 
his place had a wide reputation and great popularity, though of course 
in a small way as compared with later enterprises of a similar sort. The 
sportsmen who stopped with him sought their fishing and hunting for 
the most part at the lake, and as indicative of the former abundance of 
game it is told that Mr. Baker employed thirty men as hunters in 1868, 
kept two teams constantly on the road in autumn and early winter, 
hauling venison to market, and shipped five hundred deer. His store 
burned in 1869, but was rebuilt. 

Saranac Lake's first hotel, on the site of the present village office, 
was leased in 1819 by William F. Martin, who came from Westville, 
and ran it until he built and opened in 1851 or 1852 the house, a couple 



Haerietstown 375 

of miles distant on the lower lake, that was known for years as " Mar- 
tin's/' and afterward as the Saranac Lake House. This was almost or 
quite the first hotel in this sector of the Adirondacks that was more than 
a shack or rude structure, and Mr. Martin's friends and the community 
generally were certain when he began to build that the venture was a 
folly, sure to prove a failure. But in twenty years it had been enlarged 
to a capacity of a hundred guests, and so equipped that its accommoda- 
tions were deemed at the time luxurious. Its business included, besides 
the entertainment of guests, the outfitting of parties who sought remoter 
waters and wilds with everything needed by the camper or sportsman, 
In 1881 the property passed to the ownership of Milo B. Miller at a 
consideration of eighteen thousand dollars, and was doubled in size. 
Mr. Miller managed it until it was destroyed by fire in 1890. It has 
not been rebuilt, and the site is now owned by the Hotel Ampersand 
interests. 

Virgil C. Bartlett succeeded Mr. Martin as landlord of the hotel 
leased from Pliny Miller. He was a picturesque character, and when 
excited or annoyed his language was apt to be emphatic, not to say vivid. 
But he was quite as much a man of action, as of words, and is credited 
with having established the first line of stages which gave communica- 
tion between Saranac Lake and Lake Champlain points. In 1855 he 
built the hotel at Bartlett's carry, on the outlet of Upper Saranac lake, 
which he made a popular resort until his death in 1884. The house was 
bought in 1890 by the Saranac Club, which had only a short life, 
during which the hotel burned. At present a large and fine property 
occupies the site, with a dozen or more cottages auxiliary to it. J. H. 
Beardon is the manager. James W. Daly occupied the hotel in the 
village after the Bartlett tenancy, and w r as its landlord when it burned 
in 1856. 

The hotel in the village which Martin and Bartlett had kept having 
burned, John Jay Miller bought from his father, the captain, a consider- 
able tract of land, inclusive of the site of the Riverside Inn, where he 
erected a modest, plain inn or tavern, and leased it in 1860 to the 
Bloods — Orlando, Alonzo and Arvilla. After five years of occupancy 
and management the Bloods bought the establishment with about eighty 
acres of land for two thousand dollars. Charles H. Kendall was tin 
next owner and landlord after the Bloods, and was followed by George 
Berkley, who named it the Adirondack House. When Berkley was mur- 
dered something like thirty years ago, Wallace Murray became the pro- 
prietor, and changed the name to Riverside Inn. Pine & Corbett, young 



376 History of Franklin County 

men who had received hotel training with Paul Smith, next bought the 
property, which has been greatly enlarged and improved, and is at least 
as fine an all-the-year hotel as there is in the Adirondacks. 

Another of the early summer hotels in Harrietstown was Jesse Corey's 
Rustic Lodge at the foot of Upper Saranac Lake, which was built about 
1859 at the Saranac end of the portage between that water and Stony 
Creek ponds, formerly known as the Indian carry. Here the Indians 
are claimed to have had a summer village long before the advent of the 
whites, and many relics of their occupancy have been found in the 
vicinity. Tradition is that the Indians knew of a lead mine near by, 
from which they obtained the metal for making bullets, but white men 
have never been able to locate it. Corey's was kept later by Charles H. 
Wardner. 

A small and rude house w r as built at least as early as 1857 by John 
Sweeney on Upper Saranac lake at the eastern end of another carry 
from that water to the Eaquette. It was kept later by David Sweeney, 
and afterward by 0. A. Covill, and was displaced about 1886 by the 
Wawbeck, an excellent house while it continued in existence; but, the 
only approach to it at the time having been by water, it never paid, and 
in consequence was torn down in 1914. 

The Algonquin, on the lower lake, near Martin's, was built in 1884 
by Jabez D. Alexander, and originally was known as "Alexander's." 
John A. Harding, a Paul Smith protege, bought it in 1890, renamed 
it the Algonquin, and managed it for several years. Its location is 
sightly, and it has always been deservedly popular. 

The Berkley, in the village, was built in 1877 by Charles F. Gray 
for the accommodation of the city tuberculosis patients who were then 
beginning to seek the locality as a health resort, but for whose care 
there were neither suitable cottages nor hotels. Though having a 
capacity for only fifteen or twenty guests, it was of ample size for all 
of the demands then made upon it. Eugene Woodruff succeeded Gray 
as proprietor, and then Streeter & Dennison took it over, enlarged it, 
and ran it successfully for a number of years. Latterly it has changed 
ownership or management a number of times. 

The Ampersand was built by Agnew & Eaton, New York city parties, 
in 1888 for a distinctively winter resort for invalids, and though not par- 
ticularly expensive in construction carried an atmosphere of elegance 
and exclusiveness. It could accommodate about three hundred guests, 
and was soon changed into a summer hotel for tourists generally. It 
burned in 1907 under circumstances which gave rise to suspicions of 



Hahrietstown 377 

incendiarism, but suits at law lor the recovery of a hundred thousand 
dollars of insurance moneys were thought to establish the fact that, 
however anxious the owners may have been to be rid of the property, 
the fire was of accidental origin. Recently there bas been effort to 
organize and enlist capital for rebuilding on a splendid scale, at a pos- 
sible cost of a million dollars or more, and though the movement has 
not been successful as yet it is said not to have been abandoned. 

The town has never had any important industries with the exception 
of that of Branch & Callahan, which is located in the village, and covers 
an area of three acres. The plant consists of mills for the manufacture 
of building material, and employs a considerable number of men. The 
firm's particular line of work is the construction of summer camps and 
fine dwelling houses in the village. The earliest saw mill was that of 
Captain Miller, situate at the point where the electric power plant now 
is. It was owned later by the Bloods, and finally by Stephen Merchant. 
The only other mills of the kind that the town ever had, I think, were 
one built by Charles Greenough on the outlet of Colby pond in 1885, 
a steam mill at the head of Lake Flower, owned by Joe Baker, which 
burned in 1896, and one erected perhaps twenty years ago in the lower 
part of the village by Twombley & Carrier as a part of their sash, door 
and trim establishment, which was destroyed by fire. 

The only grist mill used to stand below the Miller saw mill, and was 
built by Ensign Miller, and afterward owned by the Bloods and then 
by T. X. Spaulding. It Avas a small affair, and was torn down with the 
saw mill. 

Explanation of the non-existence of considerable mills here, where 
the supply of timber was abundant, and the power excellent, would 
seem to be the remoteness of the plaoe from market, the almost entire 
lack of local demand for lumber, and the horrible condition of the roads 
in early times. Logs could be floated down the river to Plattsburgh, 
but the manufactured product could not be similarly transported, and 
thus, while lumbering in the vicinity was prosecuted in a large way 
from as early as 1857 and down to recent years, the only benefit that the 
locality derived from the operations was confined to the wages paid in 
winter and early spring. The lumbermen became marvelouslv pro- 
ficient in riding logs in the water, and were given to displaying the skill 
they bad acquired in balancing, and often took daredevil chances. One 
of these experts (Henry Martin) is said to have rode a single log across 
the East river at New York. 

With the exception of Saranac Lake, there is no village in the town, 



378 History of Franklin 'County 

and but one hamlet, viz., Lake Clear, which has a population of per- 
haps a couple of hundred, and which sprang up with the building of 
the Adirondack and St. Lawrence Eailway. It includes Lake Clear 
Junction and Otisville, which are about a mile apart, six miles west by 
north from Saranac Lake village. Together they include two or three 
stores, a post-office, a railway station, two hotels, a Eoman Catholic 
church and a Presbyterian mission chapel besides scattered dwelling 
houses. There are, however, two or three other localities which are rather 
more closely settled than the average of farming districts, each of which 
has its own distinctive name and a post-office. Peck's Corners, now 
more generally called Lake Colby, is a mile or two west from Saranac 
Lake, and consists of eight or ten houses, a store, a blacksmith shop, 
a saloon and a post-office. Harrietstown lies in the best agricultural 
section of the town, and notwithstanding it is in almost the extreme 
northeastern corner, was known for a long time as West Harrietstown, 
probably to distinguish it from Saranac Lake, which was originally 
called Harrietstown. Leonard Nokes, J. H. Farrington and A. S. 
Whitman were comparatively earty settlers at this point. Mr. Farring- 
ton kept a store, which is now abandoned. Isaiah Vosburgh bought in 
the vicinity in 1875, and erected and for several years conducted a 
boarding house — which business afforded the nucleus of the fortune 
that he has acquired. He sold to Frank G. Tremble, now of JNTichol- 
ville, who enlarged the buildings to a capacity of fifty people, but closed 
the place four or five years ago. James J. Fitzgerald bought the Nokes 
place in 1891, and has operated it successfully as a boarding house. It 
accommodates forty or fifty people, at rates ranging from nine dollars 
to fifteen dollars per week. A Presbyterian mission church was erected 
here in 1907, and is served in the summer season by theological students 
desirous of spending their vacations in the Adirondacks, and in winter 
from the mission at Keese's Mill. 

Two dates and two men loom large in the life of Saranac Lake, and 
between them account for much of the growth and spirit that have made 
it perhaps the most enterprising and progressive village in the State, as 
well as peculiarly attractive in some respects. Rev. W. H. H. Murray's 
first sketch of Adirondack life and pleasures, published in 1868 — fanci- 
ful, exaggerated and inaccurate in many particulars though it was — • 
nevertheless so touched public curiosity and interest in an alluring way 
that the next season saw a rush of visitors to the wilderness unexampled 
in number and so fruitful in consequences that its importance to the 
region can hardly be overestimated. True, many of the first throng 



Harrietstowx 379 

found only disappointment, hurried home, and never returned — 
counting themselves as of the legion of " Murray's fools ;" but many 
others, captivated by the charm of scenery, the thrill that the true angler 
or huntsman senses when his own cunning and skill prevail over the 
wariness of game in the wilds, and conscious of benefits resulting from 
life in the open, from healthful exercise or the restfulness which the 
region induces, continued their pilgrimages year after year, and, impart- 
ing something of their enthusiasm to others, brought friends with them, 
until hotels multiplied and became almost palatial, and the entire Adiron- 
dack country was made world famous as a pleasure and rest resort, a vast 
natural sanatorium. One of the immediate effects of tbe Murray rush 
was an enlargement generally of the summer hotels, with installation of 
modern conveniences and the establishment of a standard of table fare 
which the few earlier sportsmen had never thought of demanding, or even 
especially desired. Another was its benefit to those who served as 
guides — theretofore a class careless in appearance, in expression and in 
conduct except faithfully to give their employers a rough attendance 
looking to their safety and also to their success in taking game and 
fish. The changed conditions brought surer and more prolonged employ- 
ment, with higher pay, stimulated to more painstaking and gentler serv- 
ice, induced more correct habits, greater care in dress, manners and 
conversation, broadened intelligence, and proved beneficial in every 
way, for, however it may or may not affect character, attrition never 
fails to go far in marking the outward appearance of men and in sharp- 
ening their wits. Of course all this necessarily brought something of 
material welfare to other classes also — to the merchant, artisan and 
farmer. It did not, however, add very much at once to the permanent 
residential population, which showed no appreciable increase until after 
1880. But it was in large measure preparatory to what has since fol- 
lowed, and which could never have been realized except through the 
continually increasing number of wealthy men and women of generous 
and benevolent impulses who find enjoyment summer after summer in 
the Adirondacks, and become warmly interested in the various move- 
ments there of a philanthropic sort. The resources of the home people 
alone could never have accomplished even a small part of what has been 
wrought for humanity in Saranac Lake and other places through the 
contributions and efforts of visitors who, directly or indirectly, were 
started to the woods by Murray. 

It is questionable if any one resident of the county ever accomplished 
as much for it and for mankind generally as Edward Livingston Tru- 



380 History or Franklin 'County 

dean, M. D., who, a native of New York city, was driven by tuberculosis 
to the Adirondacks in 1873 — not, however, with the slightest hope of 
cure, or even of any considerable prolongation of life. The gospel of 
hope of recovery for even incipient cases of pulmonary consumption, or 
of appreciable benefit if the disease were well advanced, had not only 
never then been preached, but the teaching in vogue proscribed fresh air 
in the sick room, especially at night, though it did counsel life in the 
open under favorable conditions. Thus Doctor Trudeau, as stated by 
himself, " was influenced in my choice of the Adirondacks only by my 
love for the great forest and the wild life, and not at all because I 
thought the climate would be beneficial in any way. * * * If I 
had but a short time to live, I yearned for surroundings that appealed 
to me." At that time he was so ill and weak that he had to make the 
drive from Ausable Forks to Paul Smiths reclining on pillows and a 
mattress, and upon arrival had to be carried to his room in the arms 
of a guide. Yet he lived for more than forty years, doing work during 
the greater part of the time that would have taxed the powers and 
endurance even of a well man ; and achieving results of momentous value 
to the world. The story of it all has been told by himself in a fasci- 
natingly interesting autobiography, of which even a detailed summary is 
impracticable here, though its outlines must be drawn if this sketch is 
to carry any adequate understanding of the growth and progress that 
Saranac Lake has made, and of how it was accomplished. 

For three years Doctor Trudeau passed most of his time at Paul 
Smiths in great feebleness, but by reason of the removal of the Smith 
family to Plattsburgh for the winter of 1876-7, and inability to find 
suitable accommodations elsewhere, he was compelled to locate at Sara- 
nac Lake if he were to continue his stay in the Adirondacks. He says 
that at that time " Saranac Lake village consisted of a saw mill, a small 
hotel for guides and lumbermen, a school house and perhaps a dozen 
guides' houses scattered over an area of an eighth of a mile." The 
hotel was what is now the enlarged Eiverside Inn, and the population 
of the entire town was barely four hundred. There was only one other 
tuberculous person there for health considerations, but in the winter of 
1877-78 Doctor Loomis of New York sent a number of such patients 
to be under Doctor Trudeau's observation and care, and in this small 
and almost accidental way Saranac Lake had its beginning as a health 
resort. Benefits realized spread the fame of the place, larger numbers of 
the afflicted began to seek it, and in the course of a few years people 
of the type in question had come to comprise no inconsiderable pro- 



Hakrietstown 381 

portion of the population. Doctor Trudeau continued to spend his 
summers at Paul Smiths, but visiting Saranac Lake on two afternoons 
each week to examine and advise those who came to consult him. It 
was not long before upon these occasions the number would often be 
so large that they thronged his office, porch and yard. The village had 
no suitable or adequate accommodations for them for a time, but with 
the building of the Berkley and the enlargement or erection of houses 
and cottages expressly to care for invalids, provision was eventually 
made for all. By 1882 visitors had become so numerous, including many 
who could pay only a very moderate charge for care and treatment, that 
Doctor Trudeau determined, if funds could be raised, to establish a 
sanatorium for incipient cases at which charges should be less than 
actual cost. From that year almost to the day of his death in November, 
1915, he was a persistent beggar not alone from his wealthy friends, 
but also from utter strangers, for money with which to extend his work. 
His presentation of his case must have been wonderfully persuasive, for 
it is quite within bounds to say that the sum of individual contributions 
and of receipts at fairs and entertainments at Paul Smiths, Saranac 
Inn and other resorts can not have been less than a million dollars, and 
probably considerably in excess of that amount. The initial subscrip- 
tion was five hundred dollars, which was followed by a number of petty 
pledges, and the next was for two thousand five hundred dollars. Many 
gifts since then have been for ten, twenty and even twenty-five thousand 
dollars each ; and the doctor tells that one appeal by letter to a stranger 
which he had hoped might yield a possible two hundred dollars did in 
fact bring a cheek for one hundred times as much. 

A site for the institution was bought and donated by the guides of 
the vicinity in 1883, and comprised sixteen acres of rough, boulder- 
strewn land, which cost four hundred dollars. Additions have since 
been made — in one instance at the price of a thousand dollars per 
acre. The location is a sheltered hillside in that section of the village 
which is in Essex county, and is specifically known as Trudeau. Work 
on the first cottage, so small that it could house only two patients, was 
begun in 1884, and the original staff, exclusive of Doctor Trudeau him- 
self, consisted of a farmer, wife and two daughters, none of whom had 
had any training in administering to the sick; and for a few years 
immediately following practically the only nurses (?) were Lumbermen 
and guides and any old woman who could lie hired. The charge origi- 
nally for board and care was five dollars per patient per week, or two 
dollars under actual cost, and has since been increased to eight dollars, 



382 History of Franklin 'County 

which latter rate leaves a deficit of more than seven dollars. A 
few particularly pitiful necessitous cases receive care free of charge. 
The excess of cost over payments by patients has usually run from 
twelve to thirty thousand dollars a year, Avhich has been made up by 
receipts at fairs and by individual contributions, and all of the time 
until he became prostrated in 1915 Doctor Trudeau gave his services 
without any charge whatever. The shortage in receipts for running 
expenses in 1917 was $42,448. Until an occasional medical student 
became a patient, and a few practitioners (notably Doctor Edwin E. 
Baldwin and Doctor J. Woods Price) came to Saranac Lake because 
they themselves had contracted tuberculosis, all of this vast work 
devolved upon Doctor Trudeau alone. To the students and to the 
gentlemen named as co-workers with him Doctor Trudeau pays appre- 
ciative tribute for their intelligent and tireless participation in his 
labors. 

From the single little cottage which was its beginning, the institu- 
tion, known for thirty years as the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, and 
since its founder's death as the Trudeau Sanatorium, has grown until, 
amid grounds greatly beautified, it now comprises some forty buildings 
of a substantial character and attractive appearance, containing all 
modern conveniences — such as running water, approved drainage and 
sewerage, electric lighting and hot-water heating — and is not only free 
from debt, but has an endowment fund of more than six hundred thou- 
sand dollars ! The corps of nurses numbers ten, and five skilled physi- 
cians are in constant attendance. Nearly every structure and improve- 
ment has been the gift of some friend or beneficiary as a memorial. 
They include an administration building, a fireproof laundry, a nurses' 
home and training school, an infirmary for the bed-ridden, a post-office, 
a reception building with offices, laboratory and X-ray department for 
scientific work and research, a pavilion for amusements and entertain- 
ments, a stone chapel, a workshop for the patients where, both to divert 
them from brooding over their ills and for utility purposes, fancy 
leather work, bookbinding, brass work, basketry, photography and frame- 
making are taught, and, of course, a number of cottages of varying 
capacity each, but aggregating over one hundred. Between three and 
four hundred patients are treated every year, and the running expenses 
alone in 1917 were $109,918. The essence of the treament is "rest, 
fresh air and a daily regulation by the physician of the patient's life 
and habits." The cures are estimated at one in six or seven of those 
treated, while the percentage in which the disease is held to have been 
arrested or improved is placed at about sixty. 



Harrietstow n 383 

Additional to the distinctively sanatorium work and achievements, 
Doctor Trudeau gave close study and careful experiment for years in a 
private laboratory at his home to the problem of the nature, cause and 
how best to treat tuberculosis, as well as to effort to discover a cure. 
The original laboratory, crude in construction and insufficient both in 
size and equipment, has been replaced by one of fine and elaborate 
outfit, quartered in a fireproof building erected expressly for it, and in 
which a band of enthusiastic specialists are continuing investigation 
with encouragingly productive results. It has been made an adjunct of 
the Trudeau Sanatorium, and effort is now making to secure an endow- 
ment for it sufficient in amount to yield an annual income of twenty- 
five thousand dollars. 

An imperfect conception may be had from the foregoing of the 
immeasurable value of Doctor Trudeau's work to the world, and it is 
pertinent to consider what its bearing, coupled with the indirect 
influence of the Murray publication, has been upon Harrietstown and 
Saranac Lake. The population of the former had increased in thirty 
3 r ears from 1845 by less than four hundred, and not only had growth 
not proceeded in larger ratio during the next ensuing half decade, but 
there was nothing in existing conditions when Doctor Trudeau came to 
suggest probability of greater progress in the future. But his service 
and his gospel of hope for the afflicted imparted an almost immediate 
impetus, and in the ten years following 1880 the number of the town's 
inhabitants had multiplied threefold, with half or more residing in the 
hamlet. In the twenty years from 1890 there was a further increase of 
over three hundred per cent, in the town. Village comparisons are more 
complicated, and must stand separately, because Saranac Lake includes 
parts of the towns of St. Armand and North Elba in Essex county, and 
of Harrietstown, Franklin county. According to the census of 1890 
the hamlet, all in Franklin county, contained 768 inhabitants, and the 
enumeration of 1892 at -incorporation fixed the number at 1,01 1, when 
the Essex county proportion could not have been much more than ten 
or fifteen per cent. It is now about 22 per cent. The census of 1910 
credits St. Armand with contributing G7 inhabitants, Xorth Elba 1,019, 
and Harrietstown 3,897 — a total of 4,983. 

But beyond anything that a census shows, it must be taken into con- 
sideration that there are in the village, practically at all times, as many 
as twelve to fifteen hundred health seekers, inclusive of accompanying 
relatives or friends and attendants — a floating population because con- 
tinually changing in personnel, but not varying greatly in numbers. 



384 History of Franklin County 

Contrasts other than that of numbers are not less striking. In the 
place of one small, rough hotel there are now a dozen or fifteen, most 
of them well kept and some really high class. The one or two boarding 
houses of simple furnishing and plain fare when Doctor Trudeau came 
forty years ago have increased to sixty or more, many of them well 
appointed and well managed and built expressly for occupancy by the 
sick. The weekly charges by these range from eight to forty dollars, 
with a few of the best going as high as fifty dollars. As against the 
single physician of the earlier day there are now no less than twenty, 
not a few of whom are specialists who would stand high in the pro- 
fession anywhere. The one little store, scantily stocked with coarse 
wares, has seen many pretentious establishments, including fine markets, 
spring up, filled with choice and high-priced goods attractively dis- 
played. Where there was not a single house of worship, and where even 
the itinerant preacher came not oftener than once a fortnight, there are 
four handsome church edifices, ably ministered and generously sup- 
ported. The conditions when water for the household had to be carted 
from the river or drawn from cisterns or wells in danger of pollution 
have been remedied by the construction of a gravity system of water- 
works, with a mountain spring pond the source of supply, and affording 
an abundant quantity for all uses, with a good pressure for fire pro- 
tection. The streets, formerly clouds of dust in drouth or beds of mud 
after heavy rains, are brick paved or macadamized. The tallow dip or 
kerosene lamp at the best has given place to the electric light, or to gas 
for those who prefer it. The unattractive home, usually barren of con- 
veniences, has been succeeded in many cases by residences and grounds 
which, reflecting a heavy expenditure, are remarkably fine. Park 
avenue in particular is as a whole the handsomest street that I know of 
anywhere in a place of this size. It has been built up in the main by 
those who have located here either in pursuit of health for themselves 
or for some member of the family. Land along it which sold a few 
years ago at a hundred dollars an acre now commands from three thou- 
sand dollars to ten thousand dollars per building lot, some of which 
have only a hundred feet frontage; and realty valuations generally of 
two generations ago were less than the charge now often made and 
willingly paid for a single quarter's rental of a large and well fur- 
nished cottage. One such property was recently taken from a reluctant 
lessor at four hundred dollars per month, and rentals for property 
smaller in size or less desirably located at one hundred and fifty to two 
hundred and fifty dollars are not uncommon. But further comparisons 



Harrietstown 385 

or contrasts need not be particularized, though it is worth while to list 
some of the advantages, attractions and institutions of the village, 
together with certain of its corporate acts: 

Accessibility. — Two railway lines, one a link in the New York Cen- 
tra] system and the other in that of the Delaware and Hudson, reach 
Saranac Lake, with frequent, rapid and luxurious train service. The 
distance in time from New York city is little more than it was a genera- 
tion ago from Ausable Forks, thirty-odd miles away. The station is a 
union one, and is said to have cost fifty thousand dollars. 

]Yater Supply. — The first water-works system, instituted in L893 
as a municipal project, was based upon a supply from Saranac river in 
the heart of the village, hut with the intake subsequently extended three- 
quarters of a mile up the stream. The water was forced by pumping 
to a reservoir, whence there was a gravity distribution under a hundred 
pounds pressure. Apprehensive of possible contamination of the river 
water by camps and hotels, McKenzie pond, three miles distant, was 
tapped in 1901-2 with a fourteen-inch main, and the river supply alto- 
gether cut out. The pressure remains unchanged. The watershed of 
the pond is amply protected, and the water itself is of unusual purity. 
The issues of bonds for these undertakings have aj ! $198,000, of 

which $167,400 were still outstanding in 1915. The revenue from 
rentals is ahout $22,000 a year, winch covers interest charges and retire- 
ment of bonds as they mature. No tax is levied fur fire hydrants, which 
seems to he a faulty practice. 

Lighting Systems. — Electric current is furnished by the Paul Smiths 
Electric Light and Power and Railroad Company tor street and private 
lighting. For the former the tax is ahout $6,000 a year, though a quar- 
ter of the amount is recovered from the company as a franchise tax. 
There is also a gas company controlled by aonresidenl interests, whose 
business consists principal^ in supplying gas as a find. 

Other Public Utilities mid Public Works. — A telephone system, affil- 
iated with the Bell, giving general local and long-distance service; 
brick-paved streets, which cost $99,000, with bonds to the amount of 
$96,300 unpaid in 1917, and macadamized highways on which the usual 
annual expenditure is ahout $r>,onn: a sewer system for which $128,000 
in bonds was issued between L893 and 1912, and of which $104,000 is 
outstanding; storm sewers built at a cost of $9,000; concrete Bidewalks, 
constructed by a bond issue of $22,500; a fire-alarm signal Bystem and 
a fire station, paid for by 1 o negating $1 - 500; an incinerator For 

burning garhage, swill and refuse, which cost $9,000, and for the col- 

13 



386 History of Franklin County 

lection of material and the operation of the incinerator an annual tax 
of about $5,000 is levied. The total annual tax levy averages between 
$45,000 and $50,000 on an assessed valuation of upwards of two mil- 
lion dollars, whereas when incorporation was effected in 1892 it was 
estimated that $500 would meet all administrative charges during the 
first year, but which was found insufficient by about $1,250. The total 
outstanding village indebtedness on the first of March, 1915, was 
$419,000, for the payment of the interest on which and such install- 
ments of principalis fall due a sum of nearly twenty thousand dollars 
is required annually. Besides all this, the school district, which includes 
not only the village, but also outlying neighborhoods in Harrietstown 
and in North Elba, St. Armand and Santa Clara, has a debt of $68,000, 
and levies an annual tax of about $45,000. The town of Harrietstown 
has only a very small indebtedness. The tax rate, including State, 
county, town, corporation and school district charges, is about $70 on 
each $1,000 of assessed valuation. Items of village expense other than 
those above listed include : About $4,000 for pay of three uniformed 
policemen and for incidental police items; $5,000 for board of health; 
and $500 each for street sprinkling and free library. 

Library. — A free public library, which cost $10,000 for site and 
building, contains 6,000 volumes, and has on file all of the leading 
periodicals and many newspapers. The funds for the enterprise were 
provided by individual donations and entertainments; and • two-thirds 
of the cost for maintenance is similarly provided — the village 
contributing $500 per year. 

Sanitary. — Sentiment prevails strongly that the village must live 
up to the expectations of those who come to it for health benefit, and 
the taxpayers respond willingly, almost eagerly, to every appeal for 
money for any project which is thought to promise betterment of con- 
ditions and surer safeguarding of the reputation of the place as a 
sanatorium. The district has probably the most stringent and best 
enforced health code of any small community in the State. The 
anti-spitting ordinance is far from a dead letter; the soda fountains are 
permitted to use only individual cups, which are destroyed after having 
been once used; when vacated every house or apartment occupied by a 
tuberculous person must be thoroughly disinfected, including all con- 
tents, before any one else may move into it; and every possible precau- 
tion is established against practices which might spread infection. By 
this care those who are authority on the question insist that there is 
4ess danger of contracting tuberculosis in this center, thronged with 
invalids, than exists almost anywhere else. 



Hakrietstown" 387 

Schools. — The first school was taught in 1838 by Mary A. Miller, a 
granddaughter of Captain Pliny, and the second by Mrs. Mary E. 
McClelland. Another early teacher was Mrs. Azel Lathrop, mother of 
Mrs. Estelle Martin. Even as late as 1884 the entire assessed valuation 
of resident realty in the district was but $20,000, or only one per cent, 
of the present total ; and a little later, when it was proposed to erect a 
two-room school house, opposition developed upon the ground that the 
district would never grow to fill it. Nevertheless it was not long before 
six rooms were needed, and to these additions have been made from time 
to time until the central building contains twenty-odd rooms, and 
employs as many teachers. It has a good working library of 5,000 vol- 
umes, with an outfit of physical and chemical apparatus, is chartered as 
a high school, and does college preparatory work. There are forty 
teachers employed in the district, and the school buildings have an 
estimated value of over eighty thousand dollars, not including sites, 
furnishings and apparatus. 

Organizations. — Business, social, fraternal and beneficial clubs and 
lodges are numerous. Among them are a board of trade with a mem- 
bership comprising nearly every business man of consequence in the 
village; a village improvement society organized by women for civic 
betterment; a lend-a-hand society for charitable service; various boat- 
ing and fish and game clubs; a country club with clubhouse, golf links 
and tennis courts on the shore of Saranac lake; a coasting club with 
clubhouse on Moody pond for skating and other winter pleasures; Boy 
Scouts; Whiteface Mountain Lodge, F. and A. M. ; Wanneta Chapter, 
E. A. M. ; AVhiteface Mountain Chapter, O. E. S. ; Saranac Lake Lodge, 
I. O. O. F. ; Kiwassa Bebekah Lodge ; Saranac Lake Council Knights 
of Columbus ; Grand Army post ; Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union ; a free information bureau where visitors are advised concerning 
lodgings, board, etc. ; and the Boys' Club and Henderson Memorial 
Gymnasium, which had its beginning in 1913 in St. Luke's parish house, 
but which now possesses a home of its own that cost $15,000, supplied by 
two generous contributors (W. H. Cluett and Mrs. C. R. Henderson of 
New York), and whose maintenance costs from $3,500 to $4,000 a year. 
Membership is open to all boys and young men between the ages of 
twelve and twenty-one years. The clubhouse has pool and billiard tables, 
bowling alleys, a library and reading room, shower baths, and a roomy 
gymnasium with complete apparatus. The gymnasium hall is used not 
only by club members for games and exercise, but also by a number of 
other organizations for social gatherings and benefits. A director ia 



388 History of Franklin 'County 

employed by the club to supervise the athletic activities of the members 
and for gymnasium drill. Educational features also find a place in the 
programme, and a series of practical talks are given by representative 
citizens. The club has about seventy-five members. 

Amusements. — Besides the daily opportunities for boating, golf and 
tennis in summer and for skating, curling, etc., in winter, a grand 
carnival is held every alternate year, arranged and managed by the Pon- 
tiac Club. Though the affair extends only through four or five days, sev- 
eral weeks immediately preceding are crowded with interested prepara- 
tory work and its incidents continue indefinitely afterward as subjects 
for comment and discussion, so that the event fills a large place in the 
winter life of the village. During the gayeties of carnival time itself 
the streets are decorated elaborately with evergreens set along the curbs, 
with evergreen ropes arching the avenues, and with public and commer- 
cial buildings and residences bright with flags and bunting. An 
especially fine feature is a grand parade of scores of sleighs and cars 
beautifully trimmed and many floats of ingenious and attractive design. 
Skating races, exhibitions of figure skating, house parties, dances and 
other entertainments crowd the hours with fun and frolic, a gladsome 
spirit running through it all. The celebration closes with the storming 
of the ice palace at night, the bombardment with roman candles, the 
flash of rockets, the explosion of bombs and the iridescent glare on 
snow and ice affording a spectacle of great beauty- that is lortg remem- 
bered. Thousands from neighboring localities and even from distant 
cities crowd the village during carnival week. 

Hospitals. — Besides the Trudeau Sanatorium there are a General 
Hospital, a Beception Hospital, St. Mary's of the Lake and a number 
of private hospitals conducted as individual enterprises by experienced 
nurses. 

The General Hospital, situate in a wooded park a hundred feet above 
Lake Flower, was built in 1913, and is the gift of a son and daughter 
of the late United States Senator Proctor of Vermont. An isolation 
cottage was added in 1914 by a New York city gentleman. The two can 
accommodate sixteen patients. No tuberculosis cases are received. The 
rates for room, board, ordinary nursing and medical supplies range from 
ten dollars to thirty dollars per week, and are insufficient to cover 
expenses. The institution has no endowment, and the deficits, amount- 
ing to about $5,000 a year, have to be met through contributions by the 
benevolent. 

The Beception Hospital owes its existence and support in consider- 



Harrietstown 389 

able part to Miss Mary R. Preston of New Bedford, Mass., who came to 
Saranac Lake an invalid, and with health recovered was restless and 
discontented because there seemed to be no work at hand to enlist her 
interest and employ her time and energies. Upon the suggestion of 
Doctor Trudeau, being possessed of considerable means, she founded 
this institution in 1901, leasing a cottage for the purpose. Another 
cottage was added in 1903-4, and in 1905 the present building, over- 
looking the river, was erected at a cost of approximately $33,000. It 
is intended only for the care of poor persons in whom the disease is 
well advanced, can accommodate eighteen patients in winter and twenty 
in summer, and is conducted at an annual expense of about $13,000. 
Its charges are eight dollars per week, which are about half of cost. 
Donations are made from various sources covering a part of the 
deficit, and the remainder Miss Prescott makes up herself. Three 
nurses are employed, and a number of physicians of Saranac Lake give 
their attendance without charge. The annual report of the institution 
summarizes results : "A small proportion of patients set on their feet, 
a large proportion temporarily improved through rest and nursing, and 
a small proportion helped over the last hard bit of the journey by expert 
care." 

St. Mary's of the Lake is an offshoot of Sanatorium Gabriels, 
was established in 1910 at a cost of $7,000, and was enlarged in 1916 
by the addition of another story. It is non-sectarian, and when opened 
could accommodate twenty patients. Its present capacity is over thirty. 
It receives only advanced tuberculous cases, at rates ranging from 
twelve to fifteen dollars per week. One trained nurse and a number of 
Sisters of Mercy constitute the inside working force, and eight or ten 
physicians of the village give their services gratuitously. 

The Adirondack National Bank was organized in 1897, the principal 
movers in the enterprise having been William Minshull and Alfred L. 
Donaldson, both health seekers at the time. The former has been its 
president from the beginning, while failing strength compelled Mr. 
Donaldson to retire from active participation in the management a 
number of years ago. During this period of enforced quiet he has 
written a charming history of the Adirondack region. The bank has 
a capital of $50,000, an earned surplus of double that amount, and 
deposits of nearly three-quarters of a million. Its banking house, built 
expressly for it, is an attractive structure, fire-proof, contains safe 
deposit vaults for the use of customers, and is carried at a valuation of 
$45,000. The Saranac Lake National Bank, also capitalized at $50,000, 



390 History of Franklin County 

was chartered in 1907. It has an earned surplus of approximately 
$21,000 and deposits of over a quarter of a million. Both institutions 
enjoy and deserve local public confidence. 

Saranac Lake's first newspapers were the Pioneer and then the 
Herald, both by W. F. Mannix. The Enterprise was established in 1895 
by Charles W. Lansing of Plattsburgh and Carl D. Smith of Malone, 
and soon acquired the Herald and Pioneer. In 1898 Smith sold his 
interest to Allen Vosburgh, who sold in 1906 to Harris & Dillenbeck. 
Then George H. Foy of Malone published it for a time, and was fol- 
lowed by Kenneth W. Goldthwaite, under whose control it was 
enlarged and greatly improved, ranking as one of the very best news- 
papers in northern New York. It is Republican in politics, and is now 
a. semi-weekly. It was sold by Mr. Goldthwaite in 1918. The Northern 
New Yorker, not now in existence, was published for a few years, begin- 
ning in 1906, by John J. Connors, and the Saranac Lake News, founded 
in 1909, Democratic and ably edited, is published by E. C. Krauss. 

At the Andrew Baker cottage in the outskirts of Saranac Lake vil- 
lage, where Robert Louis Stevenson spent the winter of 1887-1888 for 
the same reason that has taken so many others to the locality, a 
memorial bronze tablet by Gutson Borglum was unveiled in October, 
1915, bearing this inscription: "Here dwelt Robert Louis Stevenson 
during the winter of 1887-1888. * * * Here he wrote ' The Master 
of Ballantrae,' 'A Christmas Sermon,' i The Lantern Bearers,' ' Pulvis 
et Dumbra,' ' Beggars,' * Gentlemen,' 'A Chapter on Dreams.' 1850- 
1894." Stevenson anathematized the climate while recognizing that it 
benefited him, calling it " bleak, blackguard, beggarly." He had a dis- 
taste amounting to positive aversion for formal social affairs, but in his 
room he captivated callers by the brilliance and charm of his conver- 
sation, and his stepson, who was with him, has recently written that 
" he had a wonderful reading voice," so that " in listening to him one 
was stirred by an indescribable sense of romance, of emotion — of the 
heartstrings being played upon." 

Among the earliest of associations or clubs to seek recreation in the 
Adirondacks was one so distinguished in its personnel that failure to 
mention it would be inexcusable. It included James Russell Lowell, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louis Agassiz, Dr. Jeffries Wyman (not as well 
known, but ranking with Agassiz in science and nature study), Judge 
E. Rockwood Hoar, Dr. Estes Howe, John Holmes (brother of Oliver 
Wendell) and W. J. Stillman, and these arrived at Martin's in 1857, 
proceeding thence to Follansbee pond, where they lived with their guides 



Harrietstown 391 

in camp. Such mode of life and everything about the wilderness was 
wholly strange to every man of the company except Mr. Stillman, and 
it is a question whether they or the guides seemed the more simple and 
ignorant to the other. Nevertheless the visitors found so much of enjoy- 
ment in the outing that they repeated it a number of times. An organi- 
zation which was to be permanent was formed, and bought a tract of 
22,500 acres of almost wholly virgin forest on Ampersand pond for $600 
(less than three cents per acre), and established a private camp there, 
which came to be known as the Philosophers' Camp. It is interesting 
to recall that the idea was not at all popular locally, the same sentiment 
being entertained regarding it which Lamora manifested forty years 
later toward Rockefeller, and that there was newspaper suggestion to the 
effect that a locked camp meant its probable destruction by fire and 
also fire danger to the surrounding forest. However, nothing of the 
sort occurred. Upon the breaking out of the civil war the club went 
to pieces, and the camp was abandoned. The tract has been repeatedly 
lumbered, but is said nevertheless to be now valued at $50,000. 

While religious services were held at Saranac Lake occasionally from 
as early as 1837, the Methodists, so far as known, having been the pio- 
neers, and a Mr. Adams " from over the lake," who served also at 
Duane at a later time, having been the first preacher, the first actually 
organized church movement was non-sectarian, of date about 1876. 
This society was called " The People's Church," and its trustees were 
Van Buren Miller, William F. Martin, Orlando Blood, Robert Smith 
and A. Fitch O'Brien. Though a lot was purchased for a church build- 
ing, no pastor appears ever to have been employed, and the movement 
was abandoned in 1880, after the Methodists and Episcopalians had 
organized. The church lot was reconveyed to the grantor, and it is diffi- 
cult now to find any one in the village who remembers that such an 
undertaking ever had existence. 

The first Episcopalian church services at Saranac Lake were held in 
December, 1877, in the parlor of the Berkley Hotel by Eev. John P. 
Lundy, D.D., of New York, who was a member of the tuberculosis 
colony wintering there. Soon afterward Doctor Lundy and others of 
the guests started a subscription for the erection of a church edifice, and 
residents of the village joined with offers of money and material. The 
funds so pledged, however, could not be carried at the time to more 
than about half of the sum required, and the project was temporarily 
abandoned, but only to be revived a few months later. Every detail 
of securing money, obtaining plans and supervising the work of con- 



392 History of Franklin 'County 

struction was given over to Doctor Tnuleau, who proved himself as 
cIEeient a church worker as he afterward became for the sanatorium, 
and early in 1879 the building was finished. The site was given by 
Miss Arvilla Blood; the chancel windows, representing Faith, Hope 
and Charity, by Mrs. R. M. Townsend as a memorial to her husband; 
and the bishop's chair, the bell and the communion service by others, 
each as a memorial. The church was consecrated in July, 1879, as 
the Church of St. Luke the Beloved Physician. It was an organized 
mission until 1903, when its membership had reached such numbers 
and its condition had become so assured that it incorporated, and has 
since prospered continually. It is said to be probably the one church 
in the United States which has an organ recital every Sunday night 
throughout the year. 

" The First Methodist Episcopal Church at Saranac Lake " was 
incorporated in 1878, the place having been theretofore merely a mission 
in combination with a number of other hamlets scattered over a wide 
extent of country, and with services provided not oftener than every 
other Sunday at the best, and at times still less frequently. Such serv- 
ices were held in the school house or in homes for almost half a century 
before the erection of a church edifice was even seriously considered, 
and it was not until 1882 that such undertaking was begun. The 
building proceeded but slowly, and four years elapsed before it had 
advanced sufficiently to permit use of the structure for purposes of wor- 
ship. Dedication occurred December 8, 1886, and in 1896-97 the build- 
ing was enlarged by the addition of a transept. 

Roman Catholic Church growth at Saranac Lake has been marvelous. 
So far as known, the first services in the vicinity according to the rites 
of this faith were held in 1886 by Rev. Father Michael Charbonneau in 
the Swain camp, then occupied by Peter Solomon, who continued his 
ministrations irregularly for about two years, and afterward, still irregu- 
larly, until 1890 by Rev. Father James McCarthy of Rochester, tem- 
porarily stopping here. In 1888 Saint Bernard's Church was incor- 
porated, the first lay trustees having been John Meagher and Michael 
Carey ; but the society had no rector until August 31, 1890, when Rev. 
John J. Waters was ordained at Malone, and the same day assigned to 
Saranac Lake, where he has served continuously ever since. At that 
date the parish extended from Onchiota to Cascade lakes, and included 
also Saranac Inn, Bloomingdale and the Bartlett Carry. The number 
of members in this entire territory was then only sixty. Father Waters 
entered upon his work with energy and determination, holding services 



Harrietstown" 393 

in Spaulding Block or the town hall; but in the course of two years 
secured the erection of a church building, which burned in 1909. The 
town hall was again used following the fire until a new church had been 
built, which is a massive stone structure of imposing appearance. It 
has an altar of Carara marble that was executed in Italy, given by the 
women of the parish. The new edifice was more than three years in 
construction, though the first service in it was held on Thanksgiving, 
1912. It was consecrated just one year later. Notwithstanding the 
original parish has been divided a number of times, and now includes 
only Saranac Lake and the immediate vicinity, its membership has 
increased until it numbers between fifteen and sixteen hundred. 

The " First Presbysterian Church of Saranac Lake " was incorporated 
March 10, 1891, but the local records show that organization was actually 
effected in 1890, and that Eev. Richard G. McCarthy had secured a lot 
for a church site as early as August, 1889. The building was finished and 
dedicated in April, 1890, the funds for the work having been obtained 
by Mr. McCarthy, mostly from guests at Paul Smiths and other Adiron- 
dack summer hotels. At the date set for dedication the building fund 
lacked eleven hundred dollars of enough to meet the cost of construction, 
which deficiency was supplied by Colonel Elliott F. Shepard of New 
York. Mrs. Shepard gave the parsonage. The sum of the subscrip- 
tions by Colonel and Mrs. Shepard was $11,271. Until 1903 no one 
was installed as pastor, the five clergymen in charge during the inter- 
vening period having served in the capacity of " stated supply." The 
charter members numbered seventeen. The present membership is above 
two hundred and fifty, and the society is one of the strongest in the 
Champlain Presbytery. 

Mr. McCarthy had marvelous energy, and was remarkably persistent 
and successful in persuading people to open their check books in aid of 
his many undertakings. It may be questioned, however, if his zeal 
did not outrun his sagacity, for in the ten years from 1895 he organized 
no less than seventeen missions and built as many churches or chapels 
at widely separated Adirondack points, every one of which at the time 
had but a sparse population, and upon sober consideration could not be 
thought likely to attain a size and wealth that could be counted upon 
to support a church properly. Of these, several places, Lake Clear 
(organized August 12, 1896), Axton (organized in 1895), Island 
Chapel in Upper Saranac Lake and Harrietstown (church erected in 
1907) are in the town of Harrietstown. At Lake Clear there were but 
twelve families initially, and at Axton only ten. Island Chapel is main- 



394 History of Franklin 'County 

tained by summer campers, and is open only in such seasons as visitors 
are in the vicinity in considerable numbers. Axton has lost a good deal 
of its former activity, and there are only a dozen families there — some 
of whom are Catholics. Students officiate with more or less irregularity 
during the summer at Axton, Harrietstown and Lake Clear, and Mr. 
Anderson, from Keese's Mill, preaches once a month at Lake Clear and 
Harrietstown. 

A Baptist society was formed at Saranac Lake about 1895, when a 
lot for a church edifice was deeded to it by Orlando Blood. The organi- 
zation did not thrive, for in 1897 Erwin Bassford and Herbert Warren 
Pond as trustees deeded the site to the Baptist Missionary Convention 
of the State of New York in consideration of $182 and of the payment 
of outstanding claims against the lot, with proviso that it be held for 
the erection of a house of worship thereon. 

The Church of St. John in the Wilderness (of which the Catholic 
church at Paul Smiths is a mission) was organized in 1906, though not 
incorporated until May 8, 1910, with Edward Patnode and Henry F. 
Eyon lay trustees. At the date of the incorporation Father Emile 
Berard was, and still remains, the rector, but had been preceded by 
Father J. A. Hervieux. There are about twenty families in the parish. 
Father Berard is disinclined to give information concerning the church, 
and, therefore, my statements about it rest mainly upon the current 
understanding, and are not to be taken as authorized, though I believe 
them to be substantially correct. The first church edifice was erected 
in 1906. While occupying the camp of Thomas Blagden on Upper Sara- 
nac Lake in 1916 Clarence Mackay of New York city attended service 
one Sunday at Lake Clear. In the course of his sermon on that day 
Father Berard expressed the hope that the parish might have a better 
church at some time, but added that it could not then be afforded. At 
the close of the service Mr. Mackay invited Father Berard to dine with 
him, and at the dinner pledged himself to give five thousand dollars for 
a new house of worship, which is now (April, 1917) Hearing completion. 
It is understood also that Mrs. George Fayles Baker, a summer sojourner 
at Paul Smiths, has been a generous contributor toward procuring 
furnishings for the new edifice. 

F. M. Bull Post No. 621, G. A. P., was organized in 1897. Its largest 
membership was twenty-six, which had decreased to eighteen in 1915, 
when Warren Flanders was commander. 

George A. Berkley, proprietor of the Eiverside Inn at Saranac Lake, 
was shot by Charles Brown, a guide, June 22, 1888. The shot took 



Hahrietstown 395 

effect in the abdomen, and the victim lived only twelve hours. Brown 
had been drinking, and had been refused liquor by Berkley, an alterca- 
tion and a scuffle following. Brown left the hotel with a threat to 
"fix" Berkle} r , and, proceeding to his father's (Calvin Brown) home, 
got his rifle, and returned to the village, where, in the store of his 
brother-in-law, Spaulding, he awaited the appearance of Berkley. As 
the latter stepped from the hotel to the veranda, Brown fired, with the 
result stated. He then fled to the woods, and hid for the day. # The 
next day he showed himself, and upon learning that Berkley was dead 
again disappeared. He was reported to have been seen a few days later 
in Hamilton county, but, though recognized, no one was willing to 
undertake his arrest, notwithstanding a large reward had been offered 
for his apprehension. A Saranac Lake man claimed to have seen him 
later, working in a livery stable in Denver, and to have accosted him by 
name — Brown denying his identity. When the man looked for him 
later he had disappeared, and is not known to have been heard from 
since. It is quite generally believed, however, that he fled from Denver 
to Alaska. 

Gardner McLane, whose home was at Santa Clara, but temporarily 
located at Saranac Lake, shot his wife while intoxicated July 27, 1898. 
An ante-mortem statement by Mrs. McLane gave the affair the charac- 
ter of an accident, but McLane was nevertheless indicted for murder in 
the second degree. He was found guilty of manslaughter in the second 
degree, in December, 1898, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment 
at Dannemora. 

November 4, 1902, Allen Mooney at Saranac Lake shot Fred McClel- 
land in the breast, Viola Middleton in the hip, and Ellen Thomas or 
Faysette in the abdomen. McClelland and another man were in the 
house with the two women, and Mooney had asked to be permitted to 
take the place of one of the men. Upon refusal, he forced an entrance, 
and at once began shooting. Of course he was drunk. The Thomas 
woman died from the wound. Mooney was indicted, found guilty of 
murder in the first degree, and was sentenced to death. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
MLALONE 

Malone was erected from Chateaugay March 2, 1805, at Harison, 
so called because Richard Harison (never spelled with two rs) was a 
leading member of the Macomb syndicate, and consisted originally of 
all of great tract number one of the Macomb purchase and the St. Regis 
Indian reservation. Yet quite inexplicably a section of the act of 1808 
by which the county was created annexed to Harison " all those parts of 
Plattsburgh and Peru lying within the county of Franklin west of the 
old military tract/' when, as a matter of fact, such parts had been 
detached by the act of 1805. Thus all of the county's nineteen towns 
except Bellmont, Burke, Chateaugay and Franklin are offshoots, directly 
or indirectly, from Malone, which originally had an area of more than 
three-quarters of a million acres, exclusive of water. It now includes 
only two townships, aggregating 63,200 of assessed acreage. The name 
Harison was changed in 1808 to Ezraville as a mark of Mr. Harison's 
respect for his friend, Ezra L'Hommedieu of Long Island, and on June 
12, 1812, Ezraville became Malone. For nearly three-quarters of a cen- 
tury no one appears to have speculated concerning the origin 'or deriva- 
tion of the latter name, but in 1885 Vice-President Wheeler beliered 
that he had ascertained that it had been taken in compliment to Malone 
Constable, assumed to have been a daughter of William Constable. That 
theory was generally accepted as correct until Dr. C. W. Collins, under- 
taking investigation of the matter for the Historical Society, found that 
there had never been a Malone Constable, and learned from a descend- 
ant of Eichard Harison that the name had been given to the township 
for Edmond Malone, the Irish Shakespearian scholar and critic, who was 
Mr. Harison's friend. The change of 1812 was therefore merely appli- 
cation of the name of the township to the whole town; the other town- 
ship (number nine) was called Shelah. Each of the townships in great 
tract number one of the Macomb purchase had not only a number, but 
its distinctive name also; and, the original owners having been almost 
all Irishmen, the names were for the most part those of places in 
Ireland. There are nine other towns or villages in the. United States 
called Malone — one each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Ken- 
tucky, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin, all except those in 

[396] 



Malone 397 

Iowa and Wisconsin having sprung up since 1882. The two exceptions 
received their christening through the influence of men who had lived 
here, and most of the others, if not all, from residents thereof who were 
themselves Malones. 

The town is approximately seven miles in width east and west by 
fourteen miles in length north and south, and abounds in hills, plateaus, 
and ravines and valleys. Considerable areas are utterly barren, notably 
hills and ridges and plains that had been almost denuded of their once 
heavy forest growth, and then swept by fires.- The most striking of these 
are peaks and ridges in the southern part of the town which are almost 
bare rock for miles where the merchantable timber had been cut, with 
fire following, and erosion then removing every particle of soil. There 
are also considerable rocky areas that almost defy cultivation. The 
greater part of the town, however, is adapted to agriculture, and some 
of it as productive as any land in the county. 

Entering the town near its southeastern corner, the Salmon river, 
trending a little west of north, courses the entire length of the town, 
and at the village is almost exactly midway between the eastern and 
western boundaries — the exact center of the township, but not of the 
town, being in Frank E. Mason's garden on Francis street. " The 
Branch " flows northerly for nearly eight miles from its source ( Lake 
Titus, which was formerly known as Branch pond) to a confluence with 
the Salmon in the village limits. Trout river traverses the northeast 
quarter of the town, and there are brooks almost innumerable, but none 
of sufficient volume to admit of the development of a good power. The 
only ponds are Lake Titus, the Twins and a part of Lake Ayers, all in 
the southwestern section. The Salmon falls perhaps six hundred feet 
in the first ten miles of its course in Malone, and possibly a couple of 
hundred feet more from the village northward to Constable. There are 
four falls or cascades within these distances. Almost throughout its 
length in Malone the river winds between high banks, so that there is 
seldom serious damage by floods. 

State, State and county or distinctively county highways connect 
Malone with North and South Bangor on the west; with Duane via 
Lake Titus and also via Whippleville and Chasm Falls on the south; 
with Constable and Westville on the north; and two roads with Burke 
on the east, while another highway into Bellmont and to Chateaugay 
lake is projected — nine lines in all, covering perhaps forty miles of 
really good road. The Ogdensburg division of the Rutland Railroad 
(originally the Northern, and then known as the Ogdensburg and Lake 



398 History of Franklin 'County 

Champlain), completed in 1850, runs east and west through the northern 
part of the town, and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence, built in 1892, 
traverses the eastern part, affording direct connections with Montreal 
and New York. 

There are deposits of iron and of mineral paint in the town, and also 
a number of quarries of excellent building stone. In the southwestern 
quarter there is limestone from which lime was burned a good many 
years ago, and here and there a clay formation is to be found which 
makes fairly good brick. 

Some of the Pioneers 

The first settlers in Malone were Enos, John and Nathan Wood in 
1802, with Noel Conger accompanying them or following very soon 
afterward. Enos and Conger had assisted Joseph Beeman of Georgia, 
Vt., in surveying the township for Mr. Harison in 1801. This survey, 
together with one a little later by Nahum Baker, laid out Main and 
Webster to be the principal streets of the " Center," as the village was 
long known, but unfortunately no map of either is now to be found. 
Main street was to be six rods in width, and Webster the same as far 
south as Franklin ; but one night about twenty years later Noah Moody, 
Samuel Hyde and Appleton Foote built a fence cutting off two rods of 
Webster street on the west, so as to enlarge their own lots, ,and that 
encroachment was suffered to continue. One of the surve\ r s established 
a reserve of one hundred acres in the vicinity of Webster street, but 
reserved for what purpose there is no record to show, though conjecture 
suggests that Mr. Harison intended that such tract should not be included 
as farms, but be held for residential and store lots. Certainly his ideas 
of the probable importance of the place seem to have been ambitious, for 
some of his earliest conveyances were of parcels which are described as 
"city" lots. 

Other settlers followed the Woods and Conger almost at once in 
what were considerable numbers for the period, and nearly all came 
from Vermont. They were mostly of the Puritan type, and of what 
Deacon Jehiel Berry used to call "the white oak" strain, and of whom 
generally Gail Hamilton strikingly wrote : " Every church, every 
school house, every town house from the Atlantic to the Pacific has 
Plymouth Bock for its foundation. Wherever Freedom aims a musket. 
or plants a standard, or nerves an arm, or sings a song, or makes a 
protest, or murmurs a prayer, there is Plymouth Bock." 

James Constable noted in his diary of a trip through this section in 



Malone 399 

1804 that there were then thirty or forty families here, while the people 
claimed sixty. Upon a second visit in 1805 he concluded from repre- 
sentations made to him locally that, absurd as it now seems, the town- 
ship was " nearly full," and that it was time to expect to be able to 
market lands in township number nine, Shelah; but it was not until 
nearly twenty years later that that expectation began to be realized. 
What the population had become in 1805 we have no means of deter- 
mining accurately. The assessment roll for that year, however, which 
covered all of the lands in the county outside of Bellmont, Burke, 
Chateaugay and Franklin, contained 140 names besides those of non- 
residents, and of this number nearly or quite 100 were living in the 
township of Malone. Seventeen of those whose names appear thereon 
possessed no real estate, and 46 others had lands, but no houses. Every 
parcel of realty was listed as a farm or mill, and of the latter there 
were only three — Appleton Foote's at Brushton, Asaph Perry's in Con- 
stable, and Nathan Wood's in Malone. The assessment of personalty 
suggests an inquisitorial spirit and determination that no one should 
escape from sharing in the public burdens. There were only 37 persons 
who were not assessed for personalty in some amount, and the items ran 
from $10 as the lowest to $375 as the highest, to Zebulon Mead. These 
valuations are remarkable, too, for their odd totals, like $18, $58, $65, 
$95 and even $99, indicating manifestly that the assessors meant to be 
exact in screwing out the last farthing that any one was supposed to 
have. The total of personalty as listed was $1,584, and of resident 
realty $9,857. Non-resident lands outside of Malone were assessed gen- 
erally at 50 cents per acre, and in Malone at three times that figure, or 
at almost as high a rate as farms. In 1807, after Constable, Bombay, 
Fort Covington and Westville had been set off from Malone, an electoral 
census by the State gave Malone 113 voters. Of these 67 were listed as 
owners of lands in fee, and 46 as having their holdings under contracts. 
The number of votes actually cast in 1807 was 96, while the year pre- 
vious, when the northern part of the county was still a part of Malone, 
it had been 122, and 66 in 1805. Malone's population by the census of 
1810 was 767, while the territory detached from it in 1807 (viz., Con- 
stable, Bombay, Fort Covington and Westville) had 916, and that 
detached in 1808 (including Bangor, Dickinson and Moira) had 411. 

From 1805 to 1812 the assessment rolls gave no data except the 
names of property owners, the kind of premises (i. e., whether a farm, 
mill, etc.) and the valuations; and the roll for 1813 is the first from 
which it is possible to glean definitely where the residents lived and the 



400 History of Franklin 'County 

number of acres which each held. From it I copy the following data, 

only translating the technical descriptions so as to make locations 
more easily grasped : 

Cone Andrus, 26 acres east of Arsenal Green and 2 acres on Elm 

St., the Clinton Stevens, place, next east of the Wead Library. . . . $500 00 
Samuel Andrus, 14 acres on Elm street, beginning near where John 

H. King lives, and extending east 118 00 

Joel Amsden, 50 acres near Amsden farm, west of village, and 1 acre, 

house, barn and store, near Dr. Bates's place 1 . 000 00 

Christopher Austin, 50 acres on Constable town line 125 00 

Ezekiel Blanchard, 50 acres near Dimick cemetery 112 50 

Nathaniel Blanchard, 149 acres, the G. C. Cotton (now Harmon W. 

Spencer ) farm 409 75 

Timothy Bemis, 130 acres in the Gleason dist. . • • 227 50 

Oliver Brewster, 200 acres at the top of Brewster hill 1, 150 00 

Ebenezer Berry, 142 acres, on north road to Bangor (Bicknell farm) . 528 00 

Ebenezer Brownson, the Dewey farm, south of village 400 00 

John Barnes, on the road to Chateaugay Lake 435 00 

Stephen Bailey, house lot near Baptist church and tannery on west 

side of river 450 00 

Zenas Blodgett, 50 acres in Manson district 100 00 

Samuel Broughton, 75 acres in Sperry dist., northwest of village. . .. 187 50 

Wheeler Branch, 100 acres east of village, near Burke line 250 00 

Samuel Brigham, 5 acres, part of Ferguson or Jones & Lester farm. . 50 00 

Leonard Conant, 50 acres near Paddock spring 100 00 

Abel Conger, 50 acres, part of Ferguson or Jones & Lester farm 400 00 

Noel Conger, 145 acres, part of Ferguson or Jones & Lester farm. ... 1, 015 00 

Eleazer Crawford, 50 acres near Bangor line, on north road 125 00 

Jesse Chipman, 230 acres on Potash road* 550 00 

Lemuel Chapman, 103 acres on Potash road 283 25 

Zerubabel Curtis, 155 acres on Flat and east , 786 25 

Joshua Chapman, 100 acres in Williamson dist., near Burke line. . . . 250 00 

Horace Chapman, 50 acres in Williamson dist., near Burke line 112 50 

Ambrose Chapman, 50 acres in Williamson dist., near Burke line. . . . 112 50 

John Crooks, Jr., 100 acres west of poor house, off Bangor road. . . . 250 00 

William Cleveland, 1 % acres on Webster St 400 00 

Edmund Chapman, 15 acres near G. W. Hubbard (now L. L. Sayles) 

farm • ■ 45 00 

John Daggett, 150 acres, the poor house farm 487 50 

Pliny Daggett, 50 acres on road to North Bangor 100 00 

Stephen Dunning, 200 acres west of poor house 550 00 

Joel Dow, 50 acres in the Gleason dist 261 00 

David Fisk, 57 acres in northwest corner of town 250 00 

Rufus Fisk, 592 acres at " whiskey hollow " 1 , 485 00 

Zenas Flagg, V 2 acre, the P. B. Miller (now Smallman) place, Elm St. 250 00 

Applet on Foote, 4 acres and tavern (the armory lot) 1,000 00 

Ira Foote, 100 acres in Sperry dist 275 00 

John L. Fuller, % acre near bridge, south of Main St., store, house 

and barn, and ] /> acre on Elm St., near Smallman place 275 00 

Ira Gates, 50 acres in northwest part of town 137 50 

David Gates, 90 acres in northwest part of town • • 225 00 

Hiram Horton, 42 acres, beginning near Main St. bridge, running th. 

east to about Willow St., th. south to river, and th. down river to 

place of beginning (including mills) $1,500, and 5 acres, residence, 

at passenger depot, $300 1 , 800 00 

* The Potash road is the highway leading out of the North Bangor road, two miles west of the 
village, to the Fort Covington road. 



Malone 401 

Francis L. Harison, 12 acres, residence, the E. E. Muller place, on Web- 
ster St $608 00 

John Holley, in Howard dist • • 625 00 

Zenas Heath, 100 acres in northwest part of town 150 00 

Elisha Haskins, 100 acres in Manson dist 150 00 

Harry S. House, 100 acres on Trout River 250 00 

Stephen D. Hickok, 150 acres just east of village 675 00 

Jonathan Hapgood, 50 acres on north line of town 125 00 

David Hoit, 49 acres in the N. M. Foote dist 110 00 

Obadiah T. Hosford, y 2 acre, the F. P. Allen (now J. W. Fay) place 

on Elm St • • 250 00 

Aaron Hascall, 100 acres in northwest part of town 150 00 

Noah Harrington, 2 acres on Webster St 50 00 

Lemuel Holmes, 17 acres and a third of saw mill in paper mill dist. . 133 00 

Samuel Hyde, Webster St 300 00 

Joseph Jones, 90 acres in northwest part of town 217 50 

Phineas Jones, 50 acres in northwest part of town 125 00 

Silas Johnson, 135 acres near G. W. Hubbard (now L. L. Sayles) farm. 540 00 

Reuben Keeler, 100 acres in Dimick dist 300 00 

Elijah Keeler, 200 acres on continuation of Webster St 600 00 

Brownson Keeler, 170 acres on continuation of Webster St 510 00 

Apollos Lathrop, % acre west of Arsenal Green 100 00 

Samuel Loomis, 50 acres in northwest part of town 125 00 

John Lewis, 146 acres in N. M. Foote dist 401 00 

Zebulon Mead, 100 acres in northeast part of town 200 00 

Archibald Miller, % acre on Elm St 60 00 

Charles Moses, 100 acres in the northwest part of town 250 00 

Noah Moody, 4% acres on Webster St 500 00 

William Mason, 138 acres in northwest part of town 414 00 

John Mazuzan, 78 acres west of village 513 00 

Edward Massey, % acre on Webster St 200 00 

Benjamin Merriam, 4 acres on W. Main St. and 1 acre on Mill St. . . . 150 00 
Joseph W. Moulton, 50 acres in northwest part and % office on Web- 
ster St 212 50 

Elisha Nichols, 188 acres in Paddock dist 873 00 

Elijah Nichols, store in village 80 00 

Reeve Peck, y. 2 acre on Elm St 25 00 

Samuel Peck, 2 acres, north side of Main St., at the bridge, and tan- 
nery on east side of river • 400 00 

Aaron Parks, 100 acres in Porter neighborhood 300 00 

Lemuel Parlin, 160 acres on North Bangor road 480 00 

Stephen Parlin. 100 acres on North Bangor road 250 00 

Isaac Parker, Jr., 200 acres south of village 500 00 

Isaac Parker, 170 acres south of village 305 00 

John Porter, 100 acres in Porter neighborhood • 225 00 

Asahel Phelps, 4 acres on Webster St 300 00 

Warren Powers, 148 acres west of village, % acre on Elm St., and 

store near Baptist church 1, 200 00 

John H. Russell, 2 acres on Webster St 300 00 

Calvin Russell, 50 acres in northwest part of town 125 00 

Noah Smith, 137 acres in the Porter neighborhood 342 00 

David Sperry, 138 acres in Sperry dist., northwest of village 489 00 

Lyman Sperry, 213 acres in Berry dist., northwest of village 564 00 

John Sims, 1 1/2 acres on Franklin St 200 00 

Benjamin Seeley, tavern on site of present Howard Block 700 00 

Ashley Stowers, 50 acres near Dimick cemetery 125 00 

Abijah Stowers, 60 acres east of village 150 00 

Benjamin Smith, 175 acres on Potash road 350 00 

David Stratton, 50 acres near Barnard bridge 125 00 

Ebenezer and Alanson Stratton, 62 acres in northwest part of town. . 186 00 



402 History of Franklin County 

Daniel Shervvin, 6 acres on upper Webster St $36 00 

Joseph Spencer, 100 acres in Sperry dist 300 00 

Paul Thorndike, 1 acre on Webster St 350 00 

Elihu Thomas, 2 acres on Webster St 350 00 

Paine Turner, % acre on Elm St. and % acre near Main St. bridge. . 150 00 

Abner Whipple, 60 acres on Potash road 180 00 

Roswell Wilcox, 50 acres on North Bangor road, 2 miles west of 

village • • 200 00 

Asa Wheeler, 50 acres on Potash road 150 00 

Trumian Wheeler, 86 acres in northwest part of town 215 00 

Nathan White, % acre ( house, lot and shop ) on Webster St 250 00 

Enos Wood, 100 acres on Bangor road (the D. Hardy farm) 350 00 

John Wheeler, 50 acres on Potash road 150 00 

John Wood, 134 acres cornering on Elm and Park Sts 1, 139 00 

Adin Wood, 100 acres on Whippleville road and 1% acres on Frank- 
lin St • • 400 00 

Arunah Wood, % acre and shop on Elm St 200 00 

Elias Watkins, 50 acres in southwest part of township 75 00 

Luther Winslow, 100 acres in Keeler dist 300 00 

Oliver Wilder, 50 acres in Porter neighborhood 125 00 

Oliver Wescott, 50 acres in Williamson dist., near Burke line 250 00 

Nahum Whipple, 165 acres east of village 756 00 

David Whipple, 1 1 acres east of village 70 00 

Henry Winchester, 50 acres near Barnard bridge 150 00 

Harry S. Waterhouse, 2 acres on Webster St 350 00 

Ebenezer Webb, 106 acres in northeast part of town 238 50 

Samuel Webb, 100 acres in northeast part of town 200 00 

Oliver Webb, 100 acres in northeast part of town 225 00 

Ebenezer Wood, 50 acres near G. W. Hubbard (now L. L. Sayles) 

farm 112 50 

Almon Wheeler, y 2 acre, now the Elks Club on Elm St 200 00 

Nathan Wood, 200 acres near Barnard bridge 450 00 

Abel Wilson, % acre on Webster St., near Baptist church ■ 200 00 

While many of those in the foregoing list are no more than names to 
the present generation, and not a few of them left little or no impress 
and have no descendants here now, I conceive that the record is never- 
theless worth preservation, and that to those who care for knowledge 
concerning the beginning of Malone it must be found interesting, not 
simply because it shows where men preferred to settle in the years when 
choice of location was practically free, but also because with the supple- 
mental data which follow it is informative of the builders of the town. 

Cone Andrus (spelled originally Andrews) came from Corn well, Vt., 
though I think that he had lived earlier in Connecticut. He died here 
in 1821. He was the father of William, Leonard, Lucius, Albert and 
George, was a farmer, resided on Elm street, and built the first hotel 
(except Oliver Brewster's log house) that the town ever had — the one 
that stood just at the present railroad crossing, where Elm street begins. 
He was conspicuous in the public life of the town, was a member of the 
committee that had charge of building the court house, and held minor 
offices many times. During the war of 1812 he served as a cavalry 



Malone 403 

lieutenant, and before the war he deeded to the State land for an arsenal 
and afterward, for one shilling, the Arsenal Green, worth a good many 
thousand dollars to-day, for a public green and parade ground. 

Nathaniel Blanehard was also a man of substance and influence, as 
is seen from the fact that he was the town's second supervisor, and later 
was assessor and held a number of otber offices. 

Oliver Brewster had intended when he started from Vermont to fix 
his habitation farther west, but found the roads beyond Malone impass- 
able. The farm at the top of Brewster hill, just west of the village, 
being for sale, he bought it, and until he moved into the village, locating 
on the site of the Methodist church, made his home there in a log house 
and kept the place as a tavern. It was on his farm that a detachment 
of General Wilkinson's army was encamped in 1813-14. When James 
Constable passed through Malone September 23, 1805, reaching Brews- 
ter's between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, he found a dance 
party just breaking up, with discontent at having to quit so early, but 
with no alternative, as the violinist's instrument was reduced to a single 
string. Evidently dancing was no less popular then than now, for the 
party numbered forty, or probably from a quarter to a third of all the 
adult people living in what is the present town. Mr. Brewster and Cone 
Andrus were for a long time overseers of the poor, and in some years 
had as much as two hundred dollars to expend. Mr. Brewster was the 
brother of David, who came a little later. The latter was a tailor, with 
a shop where the Methodist church stands, and afterward at the west 
end of the Main street bridge. He was one of the influential Demo- 
cratic politicians of his day, and was postmaster under President Jack- 
son, with the office in his shop, where the Democratic " slates " for the 
county used to be made. Henry S. Brewster was the son of David, and 
became county clerk in 1847. 

Ebenezer Brownson resided first on the Elias Dewey farm in the 
southern part of the town, and then on Webster street, where his home 
became the rendezvous for the lawyers of the time. Whether he was a 
lawyer himself, or if he had any occupation at all except that of office 
holding, there is nothing to show. He was for two terms first judge of 
the court of common pleas, and was surrogate, county clerk and member 
of Assembly. He also held his share of the town offices, and was Han- 
son's first supervisor. He was a soldier in the war of 1812. 

Jehiel and Ebenezer Berry, whose descendants are numerous in 
Malone, were men of high character. The former, who located on the 
North Bangor road on what became the Bicknell place, kept a tavern 



404 History of Franklin County 

for a year or two. He was a soldier in the war of 1812. Ebeuezer.was 
on the farm next east. Both served the town as commissioner of 
highways. 

John Barnes, not active in public affairs except to hold a town office 
occasionally, was a soldier in 1812, an upright citizen and a deacon in 
the church. He was the grandfather of 0. J. Barnes, the seedsman. 

Noel Conger, one of the Beeman surveying party, used to be said to 
have taken two hundred acres of land, facing Main and Fort Covington 
streets, in the western part of the village, in payment for his surveying 
services. He was said also to have been the first man to cross Salmon 
river at the chasm where the stone bridge now is — making the crossing 
on a hemlock log which he felled for the purpose. He remained for 
about twenty years, and then removed to St. Lawrence county. 

Jesse Chipman had been a revolutionary soldier, serving a number of 
enlistments in Vermont commands — among which was one in the 
" Green Mountain Boys " before Quebec in 1776, and two terms in 
Colonel Ira Allen's regiment. He was private, corporal and sergeant. 
In Malone he served one term as assessor. 

Lemuel Chapman was sheriff in 1812, having had training for the 
office as a town constable. 

Stephen Dunning lived just west of the poorhouse, and Mrs. Pepper, 
the daughter of Noah Lee, who lived first in Burke, and then just 
across the road from Jehiel Berry's until he moved into Bangor, told 
thirty-odd years ago that the first religious service in Malone was held 
at the Dunning house — Mrs. Dunning holding a candle for the clergy- 
man while he read his sermon. The clergyman was a Mr. Cannon from 
Connecticut, but Mrs. Pepper neglected to state the date of the occasion. 
Her account conflicts with the understanding generally prevalent a 
generation ago, which made the place of the first religious service by a 
Mr. Eansom back of the John Mazuzan house on the corner of Main 
and Eockland streets, and the time July 4, 1801. Mrs. Pepper's father 
came in 1803, and her brother, Benjamin, was the first male child of 
American parentage born in the town. 

Harry S. House, of sound judgment and quiet life, one of the early 
supervisors and also many times assessor, was the father of the banker 
of later years who bore the same name. 

Stephen D. Hickok was a captain of a militia company in the war of 
1812, and led his command on the alarm of the battle of Plattsburgh, 
though not reaching there in time to participate in the engagement. 
He became afterward a lieutenant-colonel in the militia. 



Malone 405 

Apollos Lathrop was at one time a partner of Jacob Wead in the dis- 
tillery at " whiskey hollow," and later a merchant on Main street. He 
was the father of Loyal C. Lathrop, who was elected sheriff in ls|\\ 
and the greatgrandfather of Frank D. and Frederick L. Allen, success- 
ful attorneys in New York city, and also of William L. Allen of Malone. 

Noah Moody is said to have had the first dwelling house within the 
village limits. It stood about where the courthouse now is. Mr. Moody 
built the latter structure. He became a considerable land owner, and 
was a good deal of a factor in town affairs. He kept the first drug 
store and the first book store in Malone, and was afterward a surveyor. 

William Mason was a farmer, and in a paper thirty-odd years ago 
reciting incidents of early times and men Vice-President Wheeler 
classified him as " a man of grand native intellectual strength, resem- 
bling in his mental conformation Silas Wright." According to Mr. 
Wheeler, Mr. Mason delighted in philosophical monologue, and dis- 
cussed moral and political questions with fine analysis and great 
thoughtfulness. Mr. Mason served at two periods in the war of 1812. 

Eeeve and Samuel Pack, originally farmers, built the first tannery on 
the east side of the river. Eeeve was a sergeant in the war of 1812, and 
was elected sheriff in 1822. 

Lemuel Parlin, a farmer, also served in the war of 1812. He was the 
father of Martin L., who was surrogate in 1843, and was elected to the 
Assembly in 1859. 

Benjamin Smith, also an 1812 soldier for two periods, was a farmer. 
He was the brother-in-law of Benjamin Clark, who was at one time the 
principal merchant of the town. It was through this relationship that 
Smith came to be so commonly a given name in the Clark family. 

Asa Wheeler (not a relative of Vice-President Wheeler) was super- 
visor and assessor in the early life of the town, and was appointed 
county clerk in 1811 and again in 1815. 

David Sperry has no descendants here. A son, David P., of genialitv 
and always bearing Malone in affectionate remembrance, removed to 
Illinois soon after the close of the Civil War, and engaged at Batavia 
in the foundry business and manufacture of farming implements, 
acquiring a handsome property. He was one of the earliest advocates 
of highway building on intelligent and enduring lines. He died Decem- 
ber 30, 1896. Lyman Sperry, twice a soldier in the war of 1812, was 
the irrandfather of Lieutenant Lyman B. and Harlan P. of Malone and 
of Dennis S. The last named has lived in the West for many vears, 
and is interested in a large and prosperous stationery and blank book 
business in St. Paul. 



406 History of Franklin County 

Dr. Paul Thorndike, whose office stood on the Baptist church corner 
until he removed to the old Thorndike homestead on Webster street, 
was the father of General S. C. F. Thorndike, who was elected county 
clerk by two majority in 1819, was afterward for many years in the 
railroad offices at Malone, and served as provost marshal during the 
drafts for the Civil War. 

Eoswell Wilcox was a tanner and currier as well as a farmer, and had 
a small tannery and shop at the brook two miles west of the village. 

Luther Winslow served two terms in the war of 1812, and was known 
as " Captain." He was the father of the first girl born in the town, 
who was named Malone. She married and removed to Ohio. Eussell 
J. Cunningham is a grandson of Captain Winslow. 

Enos, Nathan and John Wood, the first settlers, located: Enos on 
what has since been known as the D. Hardy farm; Nathan on the Fort 
Covington road, near Barnard's bridge; and John at the corner of Elm 
and Park streets. All three had been revolutionary soldiers, and though 
then hardly more than boys were with their father and two other 
brothers as minute men in the battles of Bennington and Saratoga. 
Enos was known as " Major " and John as " Captain." Joseph Safford, 
father-in-law of John, had been a captain in the continental army, and 
was always called " Colonel." He came here at an unknown date, and 
died in 1808. Enos served through two enlistments in the war of 1812, 
in one of which he was a lieutenant, and his son, Adin, was an ensign 
in Captain Tilden's company at Fort Covington. The sons of Enos 
were Adin, Arunah and Enos, Jr. The younger Enos became a Presby- 
terian minister, and died at Potsdam in 1896 at the age of eighty-six 
years. Arunah was a cabinet maker, with a shop where Mrs. John 
Lincoln now lives. The only descendants of this line now living in 
Malone are Herbert J.* and Enos (sons of Henry J.) and their children, 
living near the old Adin Wood homestead on the Whippleville road — 
which Adin is understood to have taken in payment for work for Mr. 
Harison. Nelson and George H. were sons of Arunah, and neither left 
male children. Nelson was one of Malone's principal builders, and 
wherever a house here has heavy portico pillars two stories in height, 
particularly on Park street, the structure was of Mr. Wood's fashioning, 
or copied from the pattern that he set. George was at one time prin- 
cipal of Franklin Academy, and afterward became a lawyer, though not 
aggressive or persistent in the practice. He lived in the West for a 
number of years, but passed his old age in Malone. A daughter of 



* Deceased since this was written. 



Malone 407 

Nathan married Frederick Barnard (father of Nathan W. and of Mrs. 
Harry P. Orcutt), and another was the wife of Asa Stickney, father of 
Charles J. It was from Frederic Barnard that the overhead railroad 
bridge north of the village took its name. Junia ("aunt" to every- 
body) was the daughter of John, and, a spinster, was for long years one 
of the best known and best loved women who ever lived in Malone. In 
her later life she was without means or a home of her own, but in every 
family there was always an eager welcome to her and insistence that 
she continue a member as long as she would. Her mission was to help 
and serve, and wherever there was sickness or need in any way for her 
sunny, cheerful presence and deft care she managed in some way to 
learn the fact, and always responded. 

All of the foregoing were here at least as early as 1805, and a number 
of them two or three years previously. 

Joel Amsden, known as " Major " and in fact a captain of a local 
militia company in the war of 1812, came in 1806, in which year he 
was assessed as owning with Captain Warren Powers $350 of real 
estate and $525 of personalty. He became a merchant in a small way, 
with a store on West Main street at about where the late P. Clark lived 
for many years, and also had a hotel adjacent, and later built another 
hotel near the site of the Knapp or Commercial (now Paddock) Block. 
During the war of 1812, upon an alarm one night of the approach of 
the British he proceeded with a stub of pipe between his teeth and a 
lighted candle in his hand to distribute powder from a keg to members 
of his company, when the candle dropped into the powder. For- 
tunately it struck butt end down, and was snatched out in time to avert 
an explosion. The major was the father of Lauriston, who was county 
clerk in 1834, and the grandfather of James Sumner and Floyd. 

Samuel Andrus bought 14 acres from Cone Andrus in 1807, "begin- 
ning at the old well, so-called," and extending easterly along Elm street. 
The old well was out in the street somewhere in front of the dwelling 
house built by Howard E. King (now owned by Mrs. Scott Boyce), and 
within my recollection a pump stood there. Samuel was the father of 
Cone Andrus. One of his daughters became the wife of Harry S. 
House, and another married John Porter. 

Zerubabel Curtis came in 1806, and owned two hundred acres in that 
part of the village which we call the Flat and to the east of it. He was 
the first settler in that vicinity, which was known as " the road to 
Hatch's " — meaning to the tavern in Burke that was kept by James 
Hatch. He was appointed sheriff in 1814, and had been a cavalry 
sergeant in the war of 1812. 



408 History of Franklin Oounty 

William Cleveland came at an unknown date between 1808 and 1812, 
and kept a hotel on Webster street, on the lot next north of Franklin 
street. He was also part owner of a distillery. He removed to Fort 
Covington, where he had a tavern, and at one time was a partner of 
Meigs & Wead in one of their many business enterprises. 

Leonard Conant, a pillar in the church and a high-class man in all 
respects, came earlier than 1812, and was a soldier in the war of that 
period. He was followed by two brothers, one of whom was Ophir, a 
physician. Jeremiah, another brother, was a drummer in the war of 
1812. Leonard was a brother-in-law of Dr. Eoswell Bates of Fort Cov- 
ington, and an uncle by marriage of Dr. Sidney P. Bates of Malone. 
Marshall, lawyer and railroad official, who removed to La Crosse, Wis., 
forty-odd years ago, was a son of Leonard. 

Appleton Foote located originally in 1803 in Moira, where he built 
a saw mill, and after a year or two removed to Malone. Here he built 
the house and immense barns that formerly stood on the site of the 
armory, and ran the place as a hotel until the autumn of 1813. Mr. 
Foote was the contractor for building the center arch of the stone 
bridge on Main street in 1817, for which he was paid $2,000. Bichard 
G. Foote, a prominent lawyer in his time, was a son of Appleton. 

John L. Fuller came about 1808. He was the son-in-law of the 
Elder Hiram Horton, and father-in-law of Samuel C. Wead. He acted 
as the agent of Mr. Harison in selling lands to settlers, and lived at 
one time back of where the Thompson hardware is, at another on the 
corner of Webster and Jane streets, and at still another on the Clark 
place, corner of Academy and Duane streets, where he erected a store- 
house and office, which was used nearly thirty years later for school 
purposes while the academy was being rebuilt. He also made a clearing 
at the Foster Atwood (now Charles Wilcox) farm, but I do not know 
that he ever lived there. He had a store on Main street, and was one of 
the big men of his time. 

Hiram Horton the elder located about 1807, and purchased from 
John Wood the saw mill and grist mill which the latter had begun, 
together with fifty-two acres of land, which included a few acres where 
the passenger depot is and also everything south of Main street between 
the river and Willow street except a parcel along the street just east of 
the bridge. The price paid was $1,950. A year later he bought twenty 
acres on the west side of the river, between Duane street and the Salmon, 
extending east to the Branch stream, for $500. Mr. Horton finished the 
saw mill and grist mill, sold off lots from time to time, and became 






Malone 409 

prominent in many ways. His home was where the Rutland passenger 

station is. He was early supervisor, and became first judge of the 
court of common pleas. His son, Hiram, succeeded after a few years 
to his interests, and for half a century was one of the foremost men in 
the town. No man did more than the latter (perhaps no one as much) 
to secure the building of the old Northern Railroad. Among his other 
services for it he indorsed the company's notes to the amount of half a 
million dollars. He was member of Assembly in 1844 and Presidential 
elector in 1864. 

Zenas Heath was the father of Francis T., who was editor and pro- 
prietor of the Palladium for a dozen years, and also for a long time the 
leading druggist of the town. Besides pursuing the business of farming, 
Zenas engaged in teaching, and then in operating the Whippleville grist 
mill. He arrived in 1808, and served in the war of 1812. His sister 
married Major Dimick, the abolitionist and underground railroad 
operator. 

The date of the arrival of Lemuel Holmes is unknown. He was 
called "Colonel," and was a great joker — always making the best of 
adverse conditions and minimizing disappointments and misfortunes. 
He had an interest in a saw mill in the paper mill district, but moved 
after a time into the southern part of the town, the first settler south of 
Whippleville. L. W. Whipple is his grandson. 

Obadiah T. Hosford was here in 1812 — possibly still earlier — and 
lived on the Frederick P. Allen (now John W. Fay) lot on Elm street. 
He came on horseback from Connecticut, and his grandson, William, 
says that the horse which he rode was the second horse owned in Malone. 
Mr. Hosford was best known and is best remembered, however, as land- 
lord for thirty years or more at the Hosford House, which was just 
south of the present railroad crossing at the beginning of Elm street. 
For a good many years during the period when there was so great a 
scarcity of currency he was about the only man in Malone who always 
had money. 

John Mazuzan must have been one of the very earliest settlers, though 
1 find no reference to him in any record until 1810, when he was elected 
assessor. His first residence was at or near the corner of Eockland and 
Main streets, and it was told by early residents that the first religious 
service held in the town, in 1804, was appointed to be held in his house, 
but that the attendance was so large that adjournment had to be taken 
to the field, where the congregation found seats on stumps and logs. 
Mr. Mazuzan moved later to the Andrew r S. Keeler (now John Kelley) 



410 History of Franklin 'County 

lot on the north side of the street. He was a farmer and also a mer- 
chant, and held the office of town clerk for fifteen or twenty years. 

Joseph W. Moulton apparently came in 1812, and was a lawyer. His 
office was on Webster street. Beyond that I am unable to learn any- 
thing about him except that he paid $40 for his office lot, and sold it 
two years later to Dr. Horatio Powell for $1,150. 

Isaac Parker arrived in 1808 or earlier, and Isaac Parker, Jr., a 
little later. The latter had at his death one of the largest farms in the 
town, and was the third man to engage here in growing hops for com- 
mercial purposes. Samuel Hyde, who was a cabinet maker, with a 
shop on Webster street next south of the old Baptist church, was the 
second, and Eev. Stephen Paddock the first. Isaac, Jr., served in the 
war of 1812. 

Captain Warren Powers (date of arrival unknown) was a leading 
business man — a merchant, part owner of a distillery, and I think 
interested with Major Amsden in the first Amsden hotel. His store 
was near the present Baptist church. 

John H. Eussell dates at least as early as 1807, as he was town clerk 
in that year, and in 1808 and for five succeeding years clerk of the 
board of supervisors — for services in which latter capacity in 1808 he 
was paid $14. He was a lawyer, and became postmaster. That his 
duties as postmaster could not have been onerous is evident from the 
fact that at that time mail came from the east only once a week, and the 
quantity could not have been large, as the entire lot for all of the 
country between Plattsburgh and Ogdensburg was carried by a man on 
his back, who covered the route on foot. John H. was the father of 
John L. and the grandfather of Judge Leslie W. Eussell of Canton. 

Benjamin Seeley, a first settler in Moira, and then a resident of 
Bangor for a year or two, came in 1809 or earlier, buying the hotel 
which stood at the railroad crossing, and also the lot on which the 
county buildings were erected, and which latter premises he conveyed to 
the county in 1814 — two or three years after the county had begun 
building thereon. Manifestly such transactions were not then as care- 
fully negotiated and concluded as at present, for there is no record here 
or in the Clinton county clerk's office that either Mr. Seeley or Mr. 
Moody (from whom Seeley must have bought) ever had title to it. 

John Hawley (spelled Holley on the assessment roll) lived three or 
four miles east of the village, on the north road to Chateaugay. The 
fine spring which is known by his name was on his farm. He was the 
grandfather of Harry H. 



Malone 411 

Elisha Nichols and Captain John Wood married sisters in Vermont, 
and not improbably came to Malone together. Mr. Nichols preceded 
Jonathan Stearns as a merchant on the corner of Main and Academy 
streets. 

John Porter's name appears first on the assessment roll in 1808. He 
was the ancestor of the late Hiram H. Porter, and also of Nelson W., 
now one of the stirring business men of our village. 

Noah Smith, father of the genial and popular Wade, and grandfather 
of Warren T. and of Mrs. E. E. Hogle, bought 100 acres in 1805 for 
$250. The story is current in the family that Mr. Smith and five others 
came together, and had only a single piece of salt pork between them, 
which they passed back and forth to boil with vegetables merely enough 
to flavor the latter, until one of the group, forgetting what was due to 
the others, ate the pork. Mr. Smith was an ensign in the war of 1812. 

Joseph Spencer located on the Fort Covington road, probably about 
1810, and just south of the Westville line. He was a soldier in the war 
of 1812. Of his six sons, only Mason, Newell and William were suffi- 
ciently identified with the town to be factors in its affairs, and to be 
particularly well remembered. They were sturdy men, and William, 
locating in Bangor, was a soldier in the Civil War. Byron M. and 
Harmon W. are grandsons of Joseph, and a considerable number of 
other descendants of a younger generation are residents of Malone. 
With the Sperrys and the Berrys the Spencers at one time made up a 
large part of the population of the northwest quarter of the town, and 
a better neighborhood was not to be found in the county. 

Oliver Wescott (written Waistcott on the assessment roll) arrived 
about 1808, and was a farmer. He Avas commissioner of highways, and 
held other town offices. Mr. Wheeler wrote concerning him that he 
" was possessed of rare perception and sound judgment," and " would, 
with preparation, have stood in the front rank of jurists and legislators." 

Henry S. Waterhouse was here before 1807, and was a brilliant 
surgeon. He remained for more than twenty years, practising his pro- 
fession, and always had a few medical students in training under him. 
His garden on Webster street was one of the burial places for the 
soldiers who died here in 1814, at which time Deacon Jehiel Berry, a 
mere boy, was making his home with him. Mr. Berry told in the 
Palladium thirty-odd years ago that at that time he uncovered a soldier's 
body in the haymow, which undoubtedly went into the dissecting room ; 
and Hon. Ashbel B. Parmelee remembered that the doctor's own 
neighbors were always in anxiety after the death of a loved one because 



412 History of Franklin County 

of a prevalent belief that the doctor robbed graves in order to obtain 
subjects for use in instructing his students. Dr. Waterhouse's first wife 
and six children lie in the "Webster street cemetery, with their graves 
untended and unvisited by any relative for more than three-quarters of 
a century. After a second marriage the doctor went to Burlington to 
take a professorship in the University of Vermont, and removed from 
there to Key West, Fla., where Mrs. Waterhouse joined him in 1829, 
and died a few days after her arrival in circumstances that cast sus- 
picion upon the husband. Within a short time thereafter the doctor 
and his only surviving child were drowned while sailing on the ocean. 

Abel Willson, who came about 1812, was the grandfather of Malone's 
waterworks superintendent, George A. Willson. He was a merchant, 
became supervisor, and was elected county clerk in 1829. 

Almon Wheeler, father of Vice-President Wheeler, located about 
1812, and was a lawyer, witb office just east of where Putnam's Block 
now stands, and residence on the site of the Elks' clubhouse. He became 
postmaster, and was rated an able practitioner. But his gains were less 
than nothing, and he left to his widow and children only a good name 
and a heritage of debt. 

In checking up some of these names with the earliest town records 
the reflection comes spontaneously that the men of that day recognized 
and obeyed the obligation of service. Tbere may have been, as now, 
anxiety for responsible and remunerative official place, but there must 
have been also praiseworthy readiness to accept petty and irksome 
duties, as the busiest, most prominent and most dignified residents 
appear to have undertaken to serve as poormasters, constables, pound- 
keepers, overseers of highways, and even as sextons of the town ceme- 
teries. Thus Cone Andrus, Lemuel Parlin and Oliver Brewster were 
poormasters year after year; Cone Andrus, Oliver Brewster, Jonathan 
Lawrence, John Wood and Jonathan Stearns pound-keepers ; Hiram 
Horton, Appleton Foote, Harry S. House, William Mason, John H. 
Russell, Benjamin Seeley, Oliver Wescott and others overseers of high- 
ways; and Francis L. Harison (son of the owner of the township) 
sexton of the Webster street cemetery, and Jesse Chipman of the Dimick 
cemetery. If the foremost men of Malone to-day would accept similar 
trusts our taxes would be lighter. 

The Old Pound 

The pound of earliest days was an institution, and had terrors for 
the young as the bastile of France had for suspects and evildoers. 



Malone 413 

Town meeting voted regularly that cows and other cattle, horses, swine 
and sheep must not run at large, and designated certain barn-yards as 
pounds, and their proprietors as pound-keepers, with penalties to be 
paid by owners of offending animals to the keeper for distraining them. 
Any one finding an animal roaming the street or ravaging a garden had 
the right to drive it to a pound, and to him also a fee (a quarter of a 
dollar as I remember the amount) must be paid when the animal 
was loosed. Not infrequently the system sent children supperless to 
bed because the family kine could not be found, or perchance because 
the luckless owner lacked the money to redeem it. Later the town built 
a public pound in the northeast corner of the Academy Green, and later 
still one at the corner of Eockland and Main streets. The latter was 
discontinued and the stone inclosing it sold in 1866. At times the elec- 
tion of a pound-keeper was made a joke, and at one election in the 
fifties the editors of the Palladium and Gazette were named as opposing 
candidates for the office of hog-reeve. 

Taxes Paid by Notes 

Another incident of primitive procedure requires mention. In 1812 
a resolution was passed by the board of supervisors, directing the 
county treasurer " to take a note from Albon Man and George L. Hari- 
son, if the same shall be by them requested, towards the taxes due from 
Mr. Pierpont and Mr. Harison, payable in the month of September, 
next." 

Pen Pictures of Early Malone 

Forty-odd years ago Samuel C. Wead and a dozen years later Anslem 
Lincoln gave in the Palladium their recollections of Malone as it was 
when they first saw it, in 1815. They varied only two or three houses 
in their remembrance of the buildings then in existence, and analyzing 
the two articles carefully it is possible to construct a picture of the village 
or " Center " as it then was. Main street at the east end of the bridge 
was ten or fifteen feet lower than it is now, and on the west side was 
much higher. The stone bridge had not been built, and the chasm was 
spanned by stringers on which poles instead of plank were laid for a 
driveway. The court house stood on ground probably twenty feet above 
its present foundation, the original structure having been lowered four- 
teen feet at one time, and the present building set lower still. The 
road in front towered higher, as on the north it ran along a dugway. 
A half dozen small merchants had practically a monopoly of the mer- 
cantile business, viz. : John L. Fuller, between the bridge and Mill 



414 History of Franklin County 

street; Jonathan Stearns, at the corner of Main and Academy streets, 
on the site of the Smith House; Noah Moody and John Mazuzan, on 
the site of the present Baptist church ; Warren Powers, just east of this 
church ; Joel Amsden, opposite from Powers's ; Abel Willson, at a loca- 
tion not stated, but probably on Webster street; and Oliver Booge, just 
opposite the Wead Library on Elm street. On the east side of the river 
Fuller's store was the only building on the south side of the street 
between the bridge and Mill street, and a shop the only one east of 
Fuller's within the village limits, while on the north side of Main street 
there were a small house near the bridge, one where Dr. Philips and 
Fred F. Fisk afterward lived, another adjacent to Arsenal Park, the 
arsenal, and one or two on the Flat. On Elm street there were the 
Hosford Hotel at what is now the railroad crossing, the Horton home 
on the site of the present passenger station, a store and six dwelling 
houses. In a field near the Colonel Seaver homestead (Pearl Street was 
not opened until twenty years later) there was a single house, and in 
the millyard a barn, a mechanics' shop, a tannery, a carding mill, a 
grist mill, a saw mill and two tenements — one of them the mill house. 
On the west side of the river, on the north side of Main street, besides 
the court house and the Amsden store and tavern, there were four resi- 
dences, and on the south side of the street, besides the stores, only five 
houses, a tannery, a triphammer works, and the hotel which Mr. 
Amsden had just started to build near the Knapp or Commercial Block. 
Webster street had the old academy and fifteen dwelling houses, and 
Franklin two or three. There were also three asheries, making a total of 
between sixty and seventy buildings of all kinds. Dr. Bates could count 
from memory only seventy in 1821, of which he located twenty-four or 
twenty-five on the east side. Elm and Main had all of these except two, 
and Main and Webster all but two or three of those on the west side. 
Fort Covington, Duane, Park and all of the other present streets had 
not been opened, or were without a single building. Of the residents 
in 1815 three were physicians, three lawyers, two tanners and shoe- 
makers, two harness makers, two hotel keepers, and a handful of carpen- 
ters, cabinet makers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights. 

A pen picture of the village of yet earlier date than Mr. Lincoln's and 
Mr. Wead's was drawn by Ashbel Parmelee, D.D., upon his arrival in 
1810 to enter upon the pastorate of the Congregational church. All 
was dense forest on both sides of Main street, and when the trees were 
in leaf the academy could not be seen from the Main street bridge. The 
village then consisted of about a dozen frame houses and five or six log 
cabins. 



Malone 415 

And Constable had called Malone " nearly full " ten years before ! 

Oliver Booge was instantly killed in 1815, and from his books as 
turned over to the administrators of his estate I was permitted forty or 
fifty years ago to copy some of his charges to customers in 1811: Wheat, 
$2 per bushel ; corn and rye, $1 each per bushel ; hay, $8 per ton ; eggs, 
20c. per dozen; raisins, 38c; ham, 20c. and tea $2 per pound; segars, 
12c. per dozen; whiskey, $1.50 per gallon; butter, 17@18c. and sugar, 
lT@20c. per pound; pork, $25@$30 per barrel; cotton cloth, 60@72c, 
cambric, 88c.@$1.50, and calico, 62@75c. per yard; and steel, 40c. per 
pound. 

Some Early Industries 

While in the preparation of these sketches I have been mindful that 
"a famine in China will always seem less than a dog fight in one's own 
alley," the " dog fights " in Malone have been so numerous that it is 
impracticable, and would be cumbersome and tedious, to undertake to 
recite them all. Some of the affairs of the mongrels at least must be 
but barely touched, or omitted altogether. 

Of the minor industries my list includes eighteen saw mills in the 
town (not all of them early), of which nine were on the Salmon river, 
four on the Branch stream, two on Trout river, and one each on Boar- 
ing brook, the Duane stream and Winslow brook. The earliest were the 
Wood or Horton mill in the millyard in the village ; the Luther Winslow 
and Lemuel Holmes mill at the George M. Sabin place, below the paper 
mill, long before Mr. Sabin came ; and one at " whiskey hollow." 
James Duane built one at what is called " the little falls," afterward 
known as the Man or middle mill ; James H. Titus one at Titusville 
(originally called Glen Hope, and now Chasm Falls), and another at 

the outlet of Lake Titus; Burnham one near the Chasm 

Falls church ; William Lyman one just above Whippleville : Harvey 
Whipple and Scott G. Boyce one each at Whippleville; William King 
one in the village, where the Jay 0. Ballard & Co. factory is; James 
Tracey and Nahum Whipple each one on Trout river; Elijah Keeler, 
Timothy Bemis and Lucius A. Simons each one on the Branch stream; 
Lyman Glazier one on E oaring brook ; Josiah Nason one on the 
Winslow brook ; and Scott G. Boyce one on the Duane stream. Many 
of these changed ownership later, or were replaced by new mills on or 
near the same sites. The only ones of them all now in existence are 
those on Mill street and at Whippleville. 

The first tanneries, which probably were only vat yards, bark mills 
and perhaps sheds, were built, one by Eeeve and Samuel Peck in 1807 



416 History of Franklin County 

on the east side of the river in the village, near the Horton grist mill, 
and the other by Stephen Bailey and Elihu Thomas in 1809, directly 
across the river. Another and even smaller and more primitive tannery 
existed for a short time two miles west of the village, built and operated 
by Eoswell Wilcox. The Peck tannery appears on the assessment roll 
twenty years after its erection with a gradually diminishing valuation, 
as though it were outliving its usefulness, and disappears entirely in 
1837, when it was bought by William King, and merged with a more 
pretentious establishment which Mr. King had built in 1831 on an 
adjacent lot. Enoch Miller, William Eobb, Hiram H. Thompson and 
Webster Brothers were in turn owners after Mr. King. This tannery 
was burned no less than six times between 1831 and 1893, after which 
it was not rebuilt. It grew in time to be a great establishment, with 
nearly or quite one hundred operatives, and for a generation was 
deemed a menace to neighboring property, as almost every time that it 
burned it carried destruction to other buildings, including stores on 
Main street and once the Lincoln tannery on the opposite side of the 
stream. One of these fires, that of 1879, was the most disastrous as 
respects property values that Malone has ever known with the exception 
of that which destroyed the old Ferguson House. While Malone prized 
the industry because of the employment it afforded to so large a number 
of men, a sense of positive relief was nevertheless experienced when, 
after the fire of 1893, it became known that it had disappeared forever. 

Anslem Lincoln came in 1815, and with Curtis Burton bought the 
Bailey-Thomas tannery in 1817. Unable to pay for it, it was sold to 
Charles Blake of Chateaugay in 1820. A couple of years later Mr. Lin- 
coln and Enoch Miller acquired it, running it for ten years, when 
Mr. Lincoln bought out Mr. Miller, and built it over. He then operated 
it for forty years or more, finally selling to his son, John, and Henry A. 
Miller. After a time the latter became sole owner, enlarged it, and 
gave its product a reputation for excellence that was nowhere surpassed. 
It worked only about half as many men as the other tannery, and yet 
had quite as large an output. It is now operated by Thomas Garnar & 
Co. of New York, with William W. Morgan as superintendent. Garnar 
& Co, are the largest bookbinding house in America, and practically all 
of the product of this tannery, and also that of others owned by them 
elsewhere, is used in their own business. 

The first carding mill was built by the elder Horton on a lot north 
of the grist mill, but was converted into a hat factory, which was worked 
by Dean Hutchins and John Car^in. Both stiff and soft hats were 



Malone 417 

made, and later — Gregory was the proprietor. Mr. Horton 

erected a larger carding and fulling mill south of the saw mill, of which 
Orlando Furness was for a time the operator, with Philip B. Miller as 
foreman. This building is now occupied by Henry Baker for a 
wheelwright shop. 

Malone has had five distilleries, nearly every one of the owners and 
operators of which were men who, if now living, would abhor the busi- 
ness and deem it a reproach to be engaged in it, so changed is sentiment 
in regard to the manufacture and use of liquor. But a hundred years 
ago alcohol in some form was deemed indispensable in every household, 
and the distilleries were thought to be rendering a public service in 
making it. Some of the distilleries used grain, and others potatoes. 
The first of them, built at an unknown date and abandoned prior to 
1821, was the property of "Warren Powers, and stood on Webster street 
on the lot just south of the Harison (afterward the Bobert A. Delong, 
and now the Ernest E. Miiller) place. It appears on the assessment 
roll of 1814 as the "still lot." In 1821 Dr. Horatio Powell, William 
Cleveland, Bev. Stephen Paddock and Deacon Leonard Conant bought 
the boiler and other equipment in the Powers establishment, and built 
a distillery a mile farther south, near the Paddock spring. It burned 
the same year, and its destruction was thought to be a public calamity. 
Jeremiah Conant rebuilt it in 1827, and sold soon afterward to Samuel 
Greeno. It burned again about 1830, when Mr. Greeno abandoned the 
site, and rebuilt east of Duane street, at the foot of the Water street 
hill. How long he operated there I do not know, but either it or the 
"whiskey hollow" distillery (probably the latter) was running at least 
at late as 1845. The Greeno establishment was converted into a tene- 
ment house, and was burned in 1859. Still another distillery was built 
by Benjamin F. Whipple in the ravine near the J. D. Hardy farm, 
south of the Paddock spring. Yet another, built earlier than 1820, gave 
the name " whiskey hollow " to the locality where the lower electric 
light plant is. It was owned by Jacob Wead, John Wood and Apollos 
Lathrop, and had a considerable product — the output of one distillery 
here in 1835 having been valued at $7,000, equivalent to perhaps thirty- 
five or forty thousand gallons. 

The story of other industries will be told in subsequent pages. 

Community Achievements 
The individual undertakings, necessarily along narrow lines, and the 
home life of the pioneers it is not feasible nor essential to the scheme 

14 



418 History of Franklin County 

of this sketch, to follow in detail. We know through tradition that are 
yet familiar stories in many of our families, and also by the written 
testimony of a few who were in and of the early days, that the mode 
of living was simple in the extreme, even -rude, and was unattended by 
luxury and only rarely lightened by amusements, though each of the 
hotels had a bowling alley, and baseball was played Saturday after- 
noons where Memorial Park is; that rigid economy had to be practiced 
by everybody; that there was a closer approach to entire equality than 
has since been known, with no class distinctions based upon birth or 
wealth; and that neighborly sympathy, kindness and fellowship 
abounded. 

But the main things that count in enduring influence are that these 
pioneers, even those who made no profession of religion, stood for enter- 
prise, clean living, character and morality. Capable of large endeavor, 
but restricted by lack of means in its exercise, they nevertheless aimed 
true, cherished high standards, and wrought wisely and enduringly. Of 
community achievement, which is really the measure of a locality's life 
in its broader aspect, one undertaking stands out significant of the spirit 
of enterprise which we like to think is a characteristic of Malone, and 
others loom large in the beneficent influence which they have exerted 
through all the years. 

Though we have no record at all concerning its beginning, or as to 
who were its promoters and supporters, it is known that there'was deter- 
mination early that there should be educational facilities superior to 
those that the old district school could supply, and that for a quarter of 
a century from 1806 there was repeated effort to establish an academy. 
The two-story frame building of wood formerly on Academy Green, but 
there no longer, was known for years as the Harison Academy. It was 
built from timber cut and hewed on the spot. But accurate, definite 
information regarding it had been lost even a generation ago, for in a 
public address in 1882, Hon. Ashbel B. Parmelee, himself identified with 
the town from an early day, lamented that we were without more cer- 
tain knowledge relative to its beginning and early history. It was never 
chartered as an academy, but Mr. Parmelee stated that tradition ran 
that the higher branches were taught there, though by whom, or how 
the institution was supported, was not known. In 1810 there was a 
special town meeting, called for the express purpose of requesting 
Eichard Harison to deed four acres of land for school uses, and a com- 
mittee was appointed to press the request. Mr. Harison complied, con- 
veying the premises to the judges of the court of common pleas, in trust, 



Malcxe 419 

and when Franklin Academy secured its charter in 1831 these deeded the 
plot to the trustees of that institution. A writer told in the Palladium 
sixty years ago that two early teachers were discharged for intemperance 
(fortunately their names are lost), each having had a bottle of brandy 
in his pocket in the school room during school hours. Happily the char- 
acter of our teachers since then has been of the highest, and their 
examples proper for the young to follow. 

As early as 1810 the M alone Aqueduct Association was incorporated 
by act of the Legislature to supply the village of Malone with whole- 
some water by means of aqueducts. Appleton Foote, George F. Harison 
and Warren Powers were named in the act to receive subscriptions for 
stock, which might be issued in ten dollar shares to the aggregate 
amount of fifteen thousand dollars. The right to condemn lands and 
water was conferred, and it was provided that dividends of not to exceed 
fourteen per cent, might be paid on the stock, while all earnings in 
excess of that percentage were to be paid to the treasurer of the village, 
for application to the cost of employing a night watch. Inasmuch as 
there was then no village, nor any treasurer, the latter provision seems 
absurd, though indicative of a prevalent desire to have public order 
conserved; and delve though you should deeper than the ditches were 
excavated, you will find no record of what the association did, nor how 
it throve or languished. It is a fact, however, that something like a 
third of a century ago, during the progress of work on our present water 
system, pipe logs were found on Water and Catherine streets, no memory 
of the laying or use of which even the oldest inhabitant recalled, and it 
was understood that similar pipes were laid on Webster and Main 
streets. There was, too, in the long ago a pipe line from the Hosford 
Spring, east of the fair grounds, across the Flat, but whether it belonged 
to the 1810 system is not known. The source of supply for the Foote- 
Harison-Powers system was a spring in the then Parmelee sugar bush, 
which was east by south from the Webster street cemetery. Such 
an enterprise in such a time is certainly remarkable. 

The Congregational church was organized in 1807 with twenty-seven 
members; and the Baptist church December 12, of the same year, with 
a dozen members. The date of the organization of the Methodist church 
is not definitely known; but Dr. Hough says that a minister of that 
denomination was here in 1811, and a correspondent of the Palladium 
in 1858 stated merely that the organization was effected between 1810 
and 1818. The parish appears for the first time in the minutes of the 
Genesee conference in 1818, when the church was credited with sixtv 



420 History of Franklin County 

members. Prior lo 1818 it was probably under the jurisdiction of the 
Canada conference, from which I have been unable to obtain data bear- 
ing upon the matter. But as there were sixty members in 1818 undoubt- 
edly there must have been organization some years earlier. 

Thus we have evidence of three separate religious movements and of 
two important civic enterprises almost with the beginning of the town's 
life, and when there was but a handful of people, all of them poor, to 
push things. The spirit which they reflect was prophetic of the 
development that followed. 

Franklin Academy 

As already shown, provision was made almost at once upon the erec- 
tion of the town for educational facilities of a higher order than the 
common schools afforded, though the institution then established had 
more of a private than a public character. It was, therefore, not alto- 
gether satisfying. The requirements for an academic charter in 1811 
had been merely that an institution have an assured annual income of 
a hundred dollars, but the people were too poor to provide even that 
paltry sum, and the effort to gain the Eegents' sanction had to be given 
over temporarily. In 1823, however, agitation began in earnest to secure 
an academy which should be in fact a public institution, and all that 
the name implies. Again unsuccessful for a time because of inability 
lo satisfy the Board of Eegents that adequate pledges were in hand for 
a, building and for maintenance — the requirements in this regard 
having been increased to two hundred and fifty dollars a year — a later 
movement (begun in 1827 and prosecuted more or less vigorously for 
several years) resulted in 1831 in securing the necessary funds, and a 
■charter was granted April 28th of that year — not for the Harison insti- 
tution, however, but for a new establishment to be known as Franklin 
Academy. The scheme employed for procuring funds is noteworthy. 
Seventy-three men executed mortgages on their homes and farms condi- 
tioned for the payment of interest at seven per cent, on the amount of 
the respective obligations so given. The largest principal sum pledged 
was only $225, and the smallest $15. Some were for odd amounts, one 
having been for $21.49, which meant that the mortgagor should pay 
$1.50 per year. All of the mortgages had a life of twenty years, at the 
*nd of which period contributions under them were to cease, and the 
instruments be discharged. Scarcely any money was in circulation 
at the time, and few men in the community had assured cash incomes 
even for taxes and other imperative requirements, so that the men who 



Malone 421 

engaged to pay even a small amount secured by mortgage dreaded lest 
he be compelled to default, with consequent loss of his property. It may 
thus be realized that in signing, all except those who were the most pros- 
perous did so hesitatingly and with trepidation. Nevertheless public 
spirit and self-sacrifice triumphed, and the proposed institution was 
guaranteed an annual income of a trifle under three hundred dollars. 
Franklin Academy thus came into existence, and for more than three- 
quarters of a century has been doing beneficent work of value beyond all 
calculation. The names of the mortgagors deserve a place in these 
pages. They were : Benjamin Clark, Samuel Smith Clark, Jacob Wead, 
Jonathan Stearns, Hiram Horton, Asa Hascall, Horatio Powell, Charles 
Blake, William B. Foot, Bichard G. Foote, Samuel Peck, Thomas Bus- 
sell Powell, Obadiah T. Hosford, Elias Dewey, Jr., Frederic Barnard, 
Samuel Field, Alva Orcutt, Daniel Brown, Wm. B. Vilas, Ebenezer 
Berry, Oliver Westcott, David Sperry, Nahum Whipple, Orlando Fur- 
ness, Harry Horton, Clark Williamson, Boswell Wilcox, Noah Moody, 
William Mason, John Mazuzan, Lemuel Parlin, Ebenezer B. Daggett, 
Bliss Bitmap, Noah Smith, Silvester Langdon, Nathan White, Elijah 
Keeler, Ashbel Parmelee, Aaron Beman, Myron Hickok, John Wheeler. 
Jehiel Berry, Asaph Watkins, Myron Berry, Samuel Greeno, Truman 
Bell. Nathan Strong, Joseph Spencer, Porter Moody, Anslem Lincoln, 
Josiah Learned, Hiram L. Lewis, Elias Watkins, Arunah H. Wood,. 
Jonas Stone. Martin L. Parlin, Charles Carlisle, Lemuel K. Parlin and 
Cephas Watkins, all of Malone ; Joseph Plumb, Samuel Wilson, Tal- 
madge Barnum, Barnabas Barnum, James Barnum, Elijah Barnum, 
Joshua Dickinson, Anderson Wilson and George Adams, of Bangor; 
Timothy Beman, of Chateaugav ; George W. Darling and Ashley Wyman, 
of Constable ; and Luther Bradish, of Moira. Hugh Magill and William 
Green of Malone became contributors in like manner for six years 
dating from 1846. 

In addition, the town of Malone voted to the enterprise the moneys 
in the hands of its overseers of the poor, amounting to $270.11, which 
were loaned out on mortgage, thus adding $18.91 to the academy's 
assured annual revenue, independent of tuition fees and the institution's 
share of the State literature fund. 

An academic building was erected, and in December, 1831, the doors 
of the institution were opened. During its first year of existence eighty 
pupils were in attendance, and the total income, exclusive of interest 
paid on account of mortgages, was $927. 

In 1835 the building was almost destroyed bv fire, and was renlaced 



422 History of Franklin County 

in 1836 by the three-story stone structure which served the school's 
needs until 1868. The State loaned the town of Malone two thousand 
dollars for the new building of 1836, and the town donated the amount 
to the academy. The first floor was divided into two rooms for study 
and recitation uses; the second had one class room and a number of 
smaller rooms which were rented to students who in early years lodged 
therein and boarded themselves; and the third floor was divided wholly 
into rooms that w T ere similarly used. Afterward these rooms were per- 
mitted to be occupied solely by those who were thought to be altogether 
trustworthy students, and for study purposes only, though notwith- 
standing the restriction rogues did occasionally gain the privilege of 
occupying them, and unseemly pranks occurred in them both by day and 
by night. 

In 1868 the stone structure was torn down, and a more commodious 
one, of brick, three stories in height, was erected, containing an assem- 
bly room that would seat five or six hundred persons, but without any 
of the private study rooms. In 1867 the village graded schools and 
Franklin Academy had been consolidated, and the new building housed 
both the academic department and some of the higher grades. It was 
wholly destroyed by fire in December, 1880, and was promptly replaced 
by a building of practically the same size, similarly arranged, to which 
an annex of about equal size was added in 1911 at a cost of fifty-five 
thousand dollars. 

The academy opened in 1831 with but a single teacher, Simeon 
Bicknell, whose successors have been : Nathan S. Boynton, Lorenzo 
Coburn, Worden Beynolds, John Hutton, Elos L. Winslow, Eev. H. 
S. Atwater, George H. Wood, Daniel D. Gorham, D. D. Cruttenden, 
John I. Gilbert, Gilbert B. Manley, William S. Aumock. Martin E. 
McClary, John S. McKay, Edward D. Merriman, Olin H. Burritt, 
Lamont F. Hodge, Fred Englehardt and Robert 1ST. Northup. Every 
man in the list was of a character beyond reproach, and most were .excep- 
tionally efficient as instructors, with a fine influence upon the students 
under them. Among the earlier principals a number continued to make 
Malone their home after concluding their service with the academy, and 
attained eminence in political and business walks. Of the later ones, 
nearly all severed their relations with the institution because the high 
grade of their work attracted the attention of larger places, and so 
brought them offers of better salaries than Malone could afford to paj r , 
and also larger opportunities. 

From the single teacher with which the academy opened the faculty 



Malone 423 

has grown to sixteen in number; a respectable collection of apparatus 
for work in chemistry, geology and physics has been provided ; and the 
district has a library for reference and general purposes that contains 
over ten thousand volumes. The work is of a high grade, and the insti- 
tution is rated by educators and the State department of education as 
among the best of like schools in the State. It has at present an enroll- 
ment of four hundred and fifty students, and besides the usual academic 
courses it has a business and commercial and an agricultural depart- 
ment, and one in home making. Its graduating class for 1915-16 
numbered fifty-five, and for 1917-18 fifty-four. 

Franklin is the only academy in the State that was ever chartered for 
a limited period. In 1851 the charter was extended in perpetuity. 
When application was made for such extension the trustees reported 
the value of the academic lot as $1,500; of buildings $1,000; library 
$237; apparatus $188; and other property $1,534, with a debt of $701. 
Conditions attached to the extension were that the endowment should 
never be reduced below $2,500, that the premises should be used for 
academic purposes only, and that before April 27, 1854, the institution 
should be reported free of debt, or the charter become void. 

Though merged with the village graded schools fifty years ago, 
Franklin Academy continues to retain its corporate existence, with a 
self-perpetuating board of trustees, who choose from their own number 
five of the ten members of the village board of education — the tax- 
payers of the district electing an equal number. 

The academy has three separate scholarship funds : one of three 
thousand dollars bequeathed by Hiram Taylor of Bangor; one of two 
thousand dollars given by Mrs. Mary A. Leighton of Malone for a 
memorial to her daughter, Josie ; and one of five thousand dollars, 
devised by Dr. Henry Furness of Malone. The income from these 
several funds is divided annually between eight needy and deserving 
students, and because of these scholarships no small number of boys and 
girls who must otherwise have foregone advanced studies have been 
enabled to enjoy the benefits of academic instruction, broadening them 
and fitting them for life's duties. 

After the erection of Franklin Academy the so-called Harison 
Academy building, known later as the central school building, went into 
disuse for school purposes for a time, and became a tenement, with the 
Odd Fellows occupying a part of it for a lodge room. Then it became 
a school house again, and until 1868 accommodated the fourth, fifth, 
sixth, seventh and eighth grades, with a male principal in charge of the 



424 History of Franklin County 

higher grades. These principals were Cyrus Bates, Cyrus Thomas, 
Sidney L. Sayies and Marcus Johnson. The predecessor of Mr. Sayles 
had not been a good disciplinarian, and the pupils under him had grown 
to think that they could run the school. How that view worl-ed out .one 
of the students under Mr. Sayles told twenty years later, when Mr. 
Sayles was under criticism for having handled a boy roughly in a 
school in St. Paul, Minn.: "Tore his clothes? That's nothing. We 
have seen the time when we considered ourselves lucky if we didn't get 
an arm or our whole head torn off by that same professor. At the old 
central school house in Malone we have frequently marched up stairs — 
three steps at a time — with professor just ahead of us, his hand 
twined affectionately in our hair, with an occasional yank to help us 
along. And wasn't it a beautiful sight to see him go for a boy in the 
schoolroom ! A hand lighting on his coat collar so lightly as to drive 
his spine half way through, the seat, and when the victim lit he was 
generally as far away as the school house walls would let him go. And 
it wouldn't do any good to hold on to the desk, either. After Sayles 
had run that school a month there wasn't a desk but what had been 
loosened from the floor a dozen times, and the trustees thought it only 
a waste of time and nails to fasten them down again." 

Other Educational Institutions 

St. Joseph's Academy was founded, under the auspices of Bishop 
Gabriels, by Ursuline Nuns in July, 1898, from the mother chapter at 
Bedford Park, near New York city. The Edwin I,. Meigs or Horace A. 
Taylor residence property on Elm street was purchased and greatly 
enlarged, involving an expenditure of about $25,000. Both day and 
boarding pupils are received, and the branches taught conform to the 
usual public school curriculum, with Christian doctrine added. The 
institution holds a charter granted by the State Board of Eegents. ".nil 
employs eight teachers. There are at present 25 boarding pupils and 
about 300 day students. Protestant as well as Catholic children are 
accepted for instruction. 

In the early days of 1884 Henry C. Eider, himself a deaf-mute, came 
to Malone, and proposed to a number of well known and influential 
citizens the establishment here of a school for the deaf and dumb. He 
backed the proposition with statistics showing a considerable number of 
children of this afflicted type in the northern counties, growing up in 
ignorance and without any vocational training to equip them for a 
better life than that of common laborers, and urged that such a school 



Malone 



425 



as 
success 



he was advocating must attract the attendance of these and become a 
3cess People considered his project interestedly and favorably, but 
a first there seemed to be no one willing to work actively for it except 
Mrs. Letitia Greeno and Mrs. J. J. Seaver, whose efforts enlisted co- 
operation alter a little time, with the result that the Northern A ew 
lork Institution for Deaf-Mutes was soon incorporated. The first 
term of school opened September 10, 1881, with 12 pupils in the Parker 
or Pounds house on the flat, and with Henry C. Eider as superintendent, 
and Edward C. Eider as the sole teacher. A fund of nearly a thousand 
dollars was raised by subscription to defray expenses until the institu- 
tion should become self-supporting. Mr. Eider's forecast in re-ard to 
attendance was quickly justified, and it was not long until parts of 
three buildings additional to the original quarters had to be obtained 
for dormitories. Three years later the institution had so proven its 
success and the necessity for its continued existence that the State 
appropriated $40,000 for the purchase of a site and the erection of a 
building and in 1889 $20,000 additional was voted for completing the 
edifice Subsequent State appropriations for additional structures and 
to replace the original building, which was destroyed by fire total 
$200,000 Pupils over twelve years of age are instructed and 'mam- 
tamed at the expense of the State, and those under that age by the 
counties in which they respectively reside. The State allowance is $400 
and $30 .for clothing per pupil per school year, and that by the counties 
*400 Not only deaf-mutes, but also children of defective hearing or 
speech are included among the pupils. Of these latter there have been 
a number whose infirmity or affliction had caused them to be regarded 
while m attendance at public schools as dull or stupid, but who made 
such progress under the special training here, which considered intelli- 
gently the peculiarities of each case, that they have had pronounced 
successes m life -at least one of them having won high standing as a 
physician m a large city. The use of arbitrary signs for communication 
between pupils is discouraged and prohibited, all instruction being oral 
as far as possible. This method is pursued through lip-reading or "hear- 
ing of speech by the eyes. The art is not easy of acquirement, but 
once mastered the results are marvelous. While it is difficult to read a 
single word from the lips, in grouping words into sentences one recog- 
nized word may enlighten the whole. Then, after a little, the ability to 
form and utter speech follows. The proficiency which some of the pupils 

SZ •? llP T d + m ?; and S P eakin S is ™lerful, and, as a single illus- 
tration, it is not at all uncommon for these deaf children when in attend 



426 



History of Franklin County 



once at a " movie " to read from the pictures what the aetors were saying 
n th r rehearsals. But occasionally a child evinces incapacity to read 
he Us or to acquire ability to talk, and in such cases the finger-alphabet 
f employed. Ordinarily it requires four or five years of painstaking 
L taction before a deaf-mute acquires even the slight comprehension 
oftae English language that a hearing child possesses at five years of 
age- which indicates something of the awful handicap fastened upon 
these unfortunates. Besides instruction in the studies common to all 
schools, the institution gives vocational training in printing and car- 
pentry to the boys, and in cookery, sewing and dressmaking to the garb. 
The institution has a farm of 11 acres, on which the boys help in plan- 
ing and harvesting the crops, so that they learn a so about praefac 1 agn- 
culture. The pupils at the autumn term m 1917 number 110 « 
erarv teachers ten, and the vocational instructors four. The annual 
expense each a total of about $35,000, most of which other than pay- 
ments for salaries, is for supplies bought from our home merchant. 
No enterprise ever justified more abundantly its inception and mainte- 
nance and hundreds of men and women who have had he benefit o 
training in the institution are to-day leading happier and more useful 
Hv7th g an otherwise could possibly have been their lot. The , elder Mr.. 
Eider resigned the superintendency some years ago and Edward U 
Eider succeeded him, and continues to hold the position. In person- 
ality, zeal, excellence of jndgment, executive efficiency , ^erat^ ^± 
ness to the pnpils and great tact in managing them, the trustees of the 
Station are confident that no other like school has his superior a its 
head, and that Malone is exceptionally fortunate in having him as a 
citizen and as superintendent of so valned and beneficial an institution. 

Waii Influences 
It is not to be overlooked that from the summer of 181! ! into the 
winter of 1814-15 there were war activities, with markedly disturbing 
« n Malone and throughout the northern part o the county 
Many were withdrawn from home pursuits to engage in military service 
genuine terror prevailed lest marauding Indians or general enemy incur- 
fnTsopardiz! property or even life; enterprise and development were 
halt d even paralyzed ; greed led men into treason ,n supplying the 
enemy with cattle and provisions ; moral standards were lowered, affect- 
W alike public and individual conduct; and immigration not only 
mactical y ceased, but people who had already located moved out 
Cone's population decreased by thirty-two in these four years, 



Maloxj 



427 



Chateaugay-s 218, and Dickinson's 22(5. Constable actually gained 73. 
How Malone was touched otherwise by the war is told in another 
chapter. While the war continued, and considerable bodies of troops 
were garrisoned in the county, money flowed freely, but at once upon 
the close of hostilities an almost inconceivable scarcity be°-an to be 
experienced, and continued for years. Men had to save 'literally penny 
by penny to accumulate cash for taxes, and grain at the distilleries and 
potash were the only commodities salable for money. 

1815 an Important Year 
Nevertheless the year 1815 witnessed arrivals and events of far- 
reaching local consequence. Among the most significant arrivals of 
that year are to be reckoned those of Benjamin Clark and Jacob Wead 
men apparently of means, certainly of aggressive and venturesome 
enterprise, and with relationships that are interesting. Mr Wead had 
married Mr. Clark's sister, and other sisters were the wives of Apollos 
Lathrop, Paul Thorndike and Jonathan Lawrence, while daughters of 
Mr. Wead became the wives of Hiram Horton and John L. Kussell and 
a daughter of Mr. Clark married Dr. Horatio Powell. Add that John 
L. Fuller was the son-in-law of the elder Horton, and Benjamin Smith 
the brother-in-law of Mr. Clark, with doubtless other ramifications 
unknown, and we have a chain of family connections, embracing so 
many strong men that they must have been able to control and dominate 
the community. Mr. Clark's sons were Samuel S., Benjamin W. and 
Charles J. Mr. Clark, the head of the family, was first judge of the 
court of common pleas in 1825; Samuel S. was elected county clerk in 
1831; and Benjamin W. sheriff in 1815. Benjamin S. W., a son of 
Samuel S., and a man of scrupulous honor, resolute character and great 
executive ability, became a merchant, was elected county treasurer in 
185., was identified for a long time with the management of the Far- 
mers National Bank, was appointed inspector of State prisons in 187G 
and then agent and warden of Sing Sing prison. In 1878 he was made' 
State superintendent of public works, a newly created office, and was 
afterward until his death in 1916 either a national or State bank 
examiner. 

The elder Clark and Mr. Wead entered into partnership in the mer- 

! cantile business, their store having been on the Baptist church corner 

, where Mr. Clark afterward (in 1826) erected a stone building almost a 

; counterpart of the one that still stands at the corner of Main and Fort 

Covington streets, which was arranged on the ground floor for store 



428 History of Feanklis County 

-,ses and the floor above for living apartments. It «» regarded at the 
toe as the finest building in the county, -^^7^™ 
tinned in it until 1851 or later. Here was the center of trade for a 
number of years, and it was here, in the original frame building, that 
the people assembled in 1810, "the year without a summer, when 
Sanation seemed imminent because of the almost complete crop 
failure, to await the arrival of a load of flour that was expected from 
Fort Covington, but which failed to come - causmg poignant disap- 
pointment and almost despair. Scarcity, almost destitution prevailed 
Tntil Noah Moody went to Troy on horseback, and there bought a ^cargo 
of flour, which the people were so eager to secure, even at the price of 
Iteen dollars per barrel, that they bought it from the wagons a the 
latter were driven into the village. Upon the occasion of he disap- 
pointment at the Clark & Wead store strong men wept lor the hung y 
little ones at home. Mr. Wead retired after a few years from the Clark 
& We d to e to enter upon business by himself in a building which he 
fitted up for a store and dwelling combined on Elm street, next .east oi 
ft Episcopal church. Mr. Wead was apparently more versatile than 
M Clark, or perhaps more venturesome, for while the latter stuck 
prettv closely to the counter, the former, besides continuing m mer- 
Sundistog, engaged to a number of outside enterprises mcludm 
lumbering in several localities, distilling, and operating a grist mill and 
o her works at "whiskey hollow." He was also for a number of years 
P rac i a ly the town's banker, representing here the Ogdensburg Bank 
Td then the Clinton County Bank, and was county treasurer y ^appoia*. 
ment of the board of supervisors. The last tew years of his te he wa 
paralyzed, but until physically incapacitated had a larger part m tto 
todustria and general affairs of the community than any other mdi- 
"oual until his'son, Samuel Clark Wead, and Guy feigs succeeded , 
most of his interests, and became even more important figures m 

town and county. , c Q „Vpt 

Jonathan Thompson, discharged from military service at Sack* 
Harbor, and intending to return to Ins New England home, v as 
fttraoted by Malone and what he thought to be its possibilities in 181 , 
f d cated. He became an important factor. Securing the contra t 
to earrTthe mails from Plattsburgh to Ogdensburg, he began the work 
witla'single horse, which he himself rode with tile mail in b, sa d c- 
bags, but as demand grew for passenger service he kept adding t hu, 
equipment until he had a hundred horses and a number rf»^ 
Tne grade of the courthouse lull in Malone was so steep and the aaok 



Malone 429 

so heavy with sand in those days that the stages were driven up the hill 
leading to the academy, and diagonally across Academy Green to Frank- 
lin street. The road across the green was discontinued in 1851. 

Olla Podrida 
A recital in a summary and disjointed way of incidents and develop- 
ments will help to picture old conditions and practices, as well as to 
make a partial record that may be found interesting and also useful 
for reference : 

The first town meeting was held in 1805 at the farmhouse of Jona- 
than Hapgood, near the line now separating Constable and Malone — 
that point doubtless having been deemed central as regards population,, 
as the entire county west of Chateaugay had very few inhabitants out- 
side of Malone, Constable, Westville and Fort Covington. Moira had 
a few settlers, and Bangor and Bombay none or next to none, while- 
Fort Covington's people included so large a percentage of aliens that 
they might be regarded as negligible. Not one of the other present- 
towns west of Burke, Bellmont and Franklin had a single inhabitant. 
Subsequent town meetings were held in the Harison Academy until 
1813, after which they were held for years in the court house. With all 
of Malone's progressiveness, it has never reached the point where it was 
willing to provide a suitable town house. 

The entire amount of claims allowed against the town of Harison m 
1808 was $701.91, which included $290 for wolf bounties and $250 for 
highways — making the entire cost of compensation of all town officials 
and for all other town purposes only $161.94. (The supervisor alone 
now receives annually about seven times the latter sum.) Malone or 
Harison's assessed valuation in the same year was $172,636, and its- 
total tax, including its share of the county expenses, was $713.70, or 
probably about one dollar for each inhabitant. The entire county 
budget ranged for the first five years between $3,286.02 and $1,699.91 
— the larger figure having been doe to appropriations toward building- 
the court house. Now Malone's annual town expenses aggregate more 
than twenty-seven thousand dollars, and its part of the county budget 
m 1917 was $56,398.07, or in all over seven dollars per capita. It is 'to- 
be borne in mind, however, that projects which were not thought of a 
century ago are now public charges. It is a foolish habit, lacking 
reason, to long for " the old times." and yet in this day of high cost of 
living and extravagance men might properly sigh, if not for the ol< 
scale of expenditure, at least for the old rates of taxation. 



430 History of Franklin County 

The second Amsden hotel, located near the site of the present Rnapp, 
Commercial or Paddock block, on Harison Place, was begun in 1815, 
and was destroyed by fire something more than twenty-five years later. 
It was called the Franklin House, and was kept at one time by Jonathan 
Thompson. It had President Van Buren as a guest for a few hours 
in 1839. 

The stone arch bridge was built in 1817. Prior to its erection a 
wooden bridge, strengthened by buttresses, had spanned the stream at 
quite a lower level. The first flooring of this first structure was of poles 
or saplings, with plank substituted later; and notwithstanding the 
buttresses it was a shaky, wavering affair as loaded teams passed over it. 

The first visit of a President to Malone was that of President Monroe 
in 1817. The stone bridge not having been completed, the President 
crossed on foot, and his team forded the river above. 

In the early days of the old court house, when it was jail also, 
Orlando Furness had a shoeshop in the basement of the building, and 
boarded the prisoners. 

The speedway in early years was across the Flat, but according to 
the testimony of some of the pioneers the few horses then owned here 
(the whole number even as late as 1825 was only 341) were almost all 
for working purposes, and races could hardy have been exciting. 

An agricultural society was organized in 1820, and held annual 
exhibitions at Malone for five or six years. 

Daniel Gorton established a paper mill in 1820 on the west side of 
the river, just south of the tannery. The output was all handmade, and 
at first by Mr. Gorton alone. Subsequently he was able to give employ- 
ment to two girls. It was his custom to manufacture a quantity of 
stock, and then, shutting down the mill, to peddle it throughout the 
country. The industry was continued until 1831, when it was aban- 
doned, and Mr. Gorton returned to his old home in Massachusetts. 

The first newspaper, the Franklin Telegraph, was founded by Francis 
Bnrnap in 1820, and continued for nine or ten years. Jacob Wead, B. 
Clark and Peter Hoople were the only merchants who had advertise- 
ments in the paper in 1820, though two shoemakers and a dresser of 
deerskins each had an announcement in it, and " Ben the Butcher " 
called upon debtors to settle, as else "he will be in a horrible pickle." 
One advertisement, after stating that farm products and potash would 
be taken in exchange for goods, naively added that " cash will not be 
refused if offered." The school tax collector offered to accept good 
wheat delivered to Captain Warren Powers or good corn and rye 
delivered at J. Wead's distillery in satisfaction of taxes, and the Tele- 



Malone 431 

graph's publisher advertised for clean paper rags at two and a half 
cents per pound in payment of subscriptions. The paper contained 
next to no local news, while its advices from Washington and Xew 
York bore date about two weeks earlier than their publication, and 
from Europe about two months before. But it was an excellent news- 
paper for the time, and its occasional editorials indicated a good deal of 
ability. 

In 1822-3 hope began to be entertained that the isolation of the 
town was to be lessened through the construction of a canal from 
Ogdensburg to connect the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain. The 
story of the project is told in the chapter on " Transportation Develop- 
ment." 

" Whiskey hollow " promised at one time almost to rival the village 
in importance. It had a saw mill and grist mill very early, with a dis- 
tillery not much later, and then a brickyard, a pottery, a hemp mill 
and a rope walk, and in 1831 an iron forge. John Wood, Jacob Wead, 
A.pollos Lathrop and perhaps two or three others appear to have been 
the earliest operators at the point named, but the principal activity was 
under the direction of Guy Meigs and Samuel Clark Wead, beginning 
about 1829. In 1832, when a proposed tariff revision was pending in 
Congress, information was sought from various industries throughout 
the country, and Meigs & Wead reported that their forge was started 
in the spring of 1831 with a capital of $2,500 ; that it had paid for 
wages and material $1,320; that it employed five men in the forge, 
three at the mine, and ten in making charcoal : that bloomers' wages 
were $1.25 a day, and colliers' 90 cents; that the general scale of wages 
then prevalent in the locality was $9 to $12 per month, exclusive of 
board; and that the proprietors expected to realize a profit of 12i£ per 
cent. The forge was run for twelve or fifteen years, its supply of iron 
having been procured from a mine about three and a half miles w r est 
of the village. One night in the forties when the Millerites were in 
hourly expectation of the end of the world, the glare of the furnace 
fire was taken for the coming of the flame that was to envelop the earth, 
and the disciples of the cult were certain that the day was at hand 
when " there should be time no longer." 

The only business buildings now standing on Main street that were 
erected prior to 1831 are one at the corner of Main and Catherine, 
which was so long occupied by Hubbard & Mallon, and now by the 
Duffy store, and the other the cotton factory, now owned by the Malone 
T ight and Power Co. The former was built bv Daniel Brown for a 



432 History of Franklin County 

carriage shop, and a quarter of a century later a new front was added, 
the original structure having set back several feet from the street line. 
The upper part of the cotton factory is altogether changed from its 
original appearance. The next oldest of our store buildings was 
erected by Meigs & Wead in 1831 on the corner of Mill street, and is 
now occupied by the Peoples National Bank. For the site of the 
former Mr. Brown paid $30, and the consideration for that of Meigs & 
Wead was $100. 

Malone's first fire engine was bought in 1832, and, an extremely 
crude contrivance., amounted to little more than a pump set in a box 
on wheels. It was operated by a crank on each side, and not more than 
eight men could work on it at a time. It was back-breaking business 
when one kept at it long. The water had to be dumped into the box 
from buckets, and the stream which the pump delivered was small and 
feeble. 

The Miller House, which occupied a part of the site of the present 
Flanagan Hotel, and which for a long time was the hotel of the town, 
was built by W. D. House, a tailor, for a residence. Orlando Furness 
bought it, enlarged it, and was landlord in it until his death, when 
Philip B. Miller succeeded him. While Mr. Furness was there he was 
also the operator of the Horton fulling, carding and cloth-dressing 
mill, with Mr. Miller as foreman. The day that the latter married the 
daughter of his employer was a busy one in the mill, and Mr. Miller 
continued at work until within an hour or two of the time fixed for 
the ceremony, and an hour later was again at his post. Wedding trips 
were not common in those days. 

In an issue of the Franklin Telegraph in 1824 a story is told of 
Wesley Johnson having been jolted from a load of flax, after a pitch- 
fork had first fallen from the load with the stale entering the ground, 
so that the tines stood upright. Mr. Johnson fell upon these, and they 
pierced his body from the breast and protruded from the back. Sixty 
vears later Mr. Johnson was still living on Webster street, and, as told 
by the Telegraph, one of the measures taken in 1824 to accomplish his 
recovery was to medicate the tines of the fork, which, wrapped in 
flannel, were put away to aid in healing the wound ! 

Another item published the same year was to the effect that mercury 
placed in an open cup on a window sill by Dr. Roswell Bates in Fort 
Covington had congealed, and that a resident of the same town, finding 
that a bottle of whiskey in his pocket had frozen, bursting the bottle, 
removed the glass, and ate the whiskey. 






Malone 433 

An advertisement in 1833 in the Northern Spectator, which was the 
successor of the Telegraph, offered pay of three shillings per cord for 
choppers, the men to board themselves — which was not poor pay if 
all could equal the efficiency of a boy who was reported in the Pal- 
ladium (successor of the Spectator) in 1835 to have chopped and piled 
six cords in a single day. The present price, for chopping is two dol- 
lars and a half a cord. Wages generally in 1835 were five shillings a 
day without board, and a day meant from dawn to dark — not merely 
eight hours. Few domestic servants were employed, and the best were 
expected not to ask more than five shillings per week. 

Tastes and customs change notably, as witness an advertisement by 
Amos H. Greeno in 1833, in which he announced that he would 
slaughter a beef creature every Tuesday evening, and be ready to 
deliver cuts from it Wednesday morning. In the present day stewards 
of high-class hotels and restaurants will not buy beef that has not hung 
in a cooler for six weeks. 

In 1831 William Barlow advertised that his two minor sons, aged 
respectively fourteen and sixteen years, had run away, and forbade any 
one to trust or harbor them on his account. He offered a reward of one 
cent for their return to him at Malone. 

In 1831 wool was quoted at seventy cents and butter at eighteen 
cents a pound. 

In 1836 the Palladium, reported the organization of the Malone 
Female Eeform Society, which was founded upon the belief that pro- 
longing of visits with any gentleman after the usual hour for retire- 
ment was one of the first steps toward licentiousness. 

The date of the erection of the first Horton grist mill, which was of 
wood, is not known, but was earlier than 1806. It was razed in 1853, 
and the present stone structure erected on the same site. W. W. & 
H. E. King were part owners of it at one time, and sold their interest 
in 1868 to Eugene H. Ladd. William E. Smallman bought the Horton 
interest later, and the mill was run for a long time, until Mr. Ladd's 
death, under the name and title of Ladd & Smallman. Henry Y. 
Spencer then acquiring an interest in it, the concern took the title of 
the Smallman & Spencer Company, which sold in 1917 to the Malone 
Milling Company, of which George D. Northridge is the head. I am 
told that, whereas in old times there was a flouring mill in almost every 
hamlet, this is now the only establishment between Rouses Point and 
Ogdensburg that grinds wheat. Its flour business consists altogether in 
custom grinding, which keeps it busy from early fall to early summer 



434 History of Franklin County 

every year. Grain comes to it to be ground from almost every station 
on the railroad between the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain. 

As late as 1835 the only stores on the east side of the river were 
those of King & House, Meigs & Wead, Samuel Greeno and Alva 
Orcutt, and on the west side those of Benjamin Clark & Sons, Lauris- 
ton Amsden, Noah Moody, David Brewster and Jonathan Stearns. 

The Academy Green seventy-five years ago was four feet lower than 
its present level, and was all rock strewn. 

Daniel Gaines was landlord of the Miller House in the fifties. His 
son was blind, a vocalist and pianist, and of nature as gentle as a 
girl's. He became a minister in the central part of the State, was 
known as " the blind evangelist," and was a brilliant and impressive 
speaker. 

An attempt was made in 1847 to have the board of supervisors set 
off township number nine from Malone, and annex it to Duane. The 
Malone town meeting in that year entered a protest against the par- 
tition, and nothing came of it. Some ten years afterward the proposi- 
tion was revived, and again defeated. Twenty-five or thirty years ago 
the people in the southern part of Malone and in eastern Bellmont 
agitated seriously the project to form a new town from Bellmont and 
Malone, but the latter never got any further than talk. 

The list of Malone's town clerks includes William A. Wheeler, John 
Hutton, Ashbel B. Parmelee, Joel J. Seaver and Frederick D. 'Kilburn. 
The office did not use to pay a quarter as much as it does now, and it 
seemed to be the policy of the town to bestow it upon poor young men 
who were trying to get a start in life. 

As long ago as 1848 Malone formally complained through resolution 
adopted at a town meeting that it was unjustly treated by the super- 
visors in the equalization of assessments, and made thereby to pay an 
inequitable and excessive share of the county expenses. The com- 
plaint has continued intermittently ever since, and probably is justified 
by the facts. 

In 1834 the town meeting requested the commissioners of excise not 
to grant any license for a fee of less than $20. In view of the fact that 
if liquor licenses were now issuable here, the fee for a saloon or a hotel 
would be $800 or for a store $600, the request of 1834 seems modest. 

The first passenger train from Eouses Point reached Malone Septem- 
ber 19, 1850, and its arrival was greeted by the firing of cannon and a 
general jubilee. The road was opened through to Ogdensburg Septem- 
ber 26, 1850, building having proceeded simultaneously from both 
termini. 



Malone 435 

In 1855 the State appropriated $5,000, to be expended by Wra. King,. 
Buel H. Man and Aaron Beman at a compensation of $2 a day each for 
time actually employed for clearing and improving the rafting channel 
of Salmon river and its tributaries and for constructing piers, booms 
and dams: and appropriated $5,000 additional in 1857 for completing 
the work. Ebenezer Man, Hiram Horton and B. S. W. Clark were the 
commissioners to expend the second appropriation. It was with a part 
of these grants that the dam at Mountain View was built. The act 
appropriating the money provided that State lands adjacent to the 
improvements should not be sold at private sale, but only at public 
auction in blocks of G-10 acres each at not less than thirty cents per 
acre ! 

Kerosene was introduced in Malone in 1859, and then sold at a 
dollar and a half per gallon. Three years later the price was thirty- 
four cents, advancing afterward to a dollar or more, and at one time 
since then it sold as low as seven cents. A gas company was organized in 
1870, and gas came into use in 1871 at $4.50 per 1,000 feet. The gas 
house was destroyed by an explosion in 1884, and when rebuilt the 
price of gas was fixed at $3 if bills were paid promptly. The village 
was first lighted by electricity November 27, 188G, the generator having 
been located in an annex to the Whittelsey woolen mill. The works 
north of the village were built in 1899, and those at Chasm Falls in 
1913. 

Memorial Park at the junction of Main and Elm streets was laid 
out in 1870, and the soldiers' monument in it was given in 1893 by 
John W. Pangborn, who had begun his business life in Malone, but 
removed to New York in 1853. The monument cost $3,000. 

In 1867 and for a few years immediately following ice skating was 
as much a craze as roller skating became forty years later. An ice rink 
was built on Catherine street in 1867 by Jerome and Eussell Wentworth, 
Benj. "Webster and L. R. Townsend, and did a great business. 

Malone had its first telephone service in 1882, and in 1899 a second 
and competing service was installed. The two combined in 1913, and 
the Malone exchange has about 1,400 subscribers. 

The first silos in the county were built in 1889 by B. F. Jewett of 
Bangor and Nelson W. Porter of Malone. 

Church fairs were more common thirty or forty years ago than now, 
and invariably excited more interest and produced more money. 
Almost always some lottery scheme was a feature of them, prizes being 
awarded by lot, with voting at a price per vote for a cane, a ring, a 



436 History of Franklin County 

watch or some other article to be given to the winning candidate. At 
one of the St. Joseph's fairs in 1870 the receipts were $1,800, and those 
of Notre Dame the same year $800. In 1880 St. Joseph's church 
netted $1,200 from a fair, and Notre Dame $805. In 1899 a fair for 
the benefit of Ursuline Academy netted $2,200. 

The appended census figures for Malone ought to be of interest, and 
certain of them should inspire thinking and action : 

1825 1835 1845 1865 1875 1900 1915 

Population 1,673 2,589 3,63-4 6,330 7,365 10,000 10,880 

Aliens 58 200 369 914 760 375 

No. of neat cattle.. 1.753 3,033 3,558 4,025 4,504 

No. of horses 341 568 789 1,081 1,029 

No. of sheep 2,781 4,655 9,445 8,935 2,586 

Data for years later than 1875 are not available as to some of the 
items, as the State has taken no census in the past forty years except as 
to population, and the published reports of the federal census contain 
no agricultural statistics for divisions smaller than counties. We 
know, however, that since 1875 the number of milch cows in the entire 
county has increased by about fifty per cent., of which Malone has 
doubtless had its share; and the agricultural census taken by school 
children in 1917 shows only 812 sheep owned in the town — a loss of 
more than two-thirds in forty years, and of almost 90 per cent, since 
1865. In 1876 a single buyer from Connecticut bought in the county 
and shipped to Hartford 5,000 sheep and lambs, while in 1884 the 
number bought here and shipped to New England markets was over 
11,000. At one time a little later the price paid for lambs was about 
two dollars per head, and now it is twelve dollars or more. It is incom- 
prehensible that farmers do not give more attention to sheep husbandry, 
though it is undeniable that they have experienced no little discourage- 
ment through dog depredations. For illustration, carefully collected 
statistics showed that 234 sheep were killed in the county by dogs dur- 
ing the year 1902, and in 1904 one farmer in Malone lost 25 head of 
blooded animals in a similar way in a single night. But protective laws 
are now better, and the dog nuisance ought not to be as serious as 
formerly. Under the new conditions it is hoped that the flocks may 
increase. According to the school census taken in 1917, there are five 
school districts in Malone in which not a single sheep is kept, and in 
each of seven other districts the number is less than ten. 

The school lot on Main street was a cemetery until 1874, when most 
of the bodies were transferred from it to Morningside Cemetery. The 
grounds have been graded down quite a bit, and formerly were inclosed 



Malone 437 

on the front by a stone wall. The village school district bought the 
lot from the cemetery association, which bought from the Congrega- 
tional society, and erected the school house in 1878. 

In 1881 only three churches in the town had any debt, and in the 
same year the village, the town nor the county owed a dollar. 

In 1851, when the Congregational society voted to erect its second 
house of worship, effort was made to locate it on Arsenal Green, but of 
course the conditions of the grant of the property to the State were a 
bar to such occupancy. 

About 1840 a man named Griffin made wooden clocks in a shop that 
stood where the Empsall store now is (formerly the Greeno & Austin 
stand ) , where the building known as the "Ark " used to be ; and he 
provided Malone with its first town clock. It was placed in the steeple 
of the Congregational church, but, the works having been of wood, 
weather warped them, and the clock lasted only a short time. 

How the habits and customs of a people change is not more strikingly 
shown by any one condition in Malone than by the matter of cookery. 
Until nearly two generations after the first settlement every housewife 
had to be her own baker. Then a Mr. Buck started a bakery on Duane 
street, and if his own girth were a test must have made good stuff, 
which the boys of his day aver was the case. A part of his house was 
used for a school, and Mr. Buck was generous in treating the pupils to 
crackers, cookies and cakes. A few years later John Taylor started 
another bakery on the flat, to which his son, Bobert C, succeeded. And 
then there was a third by Jacob Davis on Catherine street. All were 
closed years ago, but five others have succeeded them, and are in opera- 
tion. In addition, there are a number of women who make considerable 
quantities of bread regularly, and also cakes and pies for sale, and great 
Chests of bread are brought here daily from St. Johnsbury, Vt., Platts- 
I mrgh, Ogdensburg, Syracuse, Albany and other places, and are on 
sale at most of the stores. 

In very earlv times all but one or two of the stores were outside of 
what is now the business center — on Elm, "West Main and Webster 
streets. Then came a period, continuing for a long time, Avhen all of 
the merchants except a very few small tradesmen on Catherine, Mill 
and Brewster streets were on Main street, and mostly on the east side 
of the river. But recently stores have sprung up in considerable num- 
bers in almost every outskirt. Prom Pearl street east to the Congre- 
gational church practically every lot on the south side of Main street, 
and for more than half the distance on the north side, has come to be 



438 History of Franklin County 

a business place within thirty or forty years, and stores are scattered 
along the flat, in the Junction section, in the paper mill district, well 
out on West Main street, and in other quarters. 

AVhere and how Malone has otherwise grown is not realized until the 
localities are recalled which within the recollection of men not very old 
were farm fields. Fifty years ago all of the section known as Brooklyn 
Heights was a pasture, without a single building on it, and all of the 
territory south of Water street between the Branch stream and the 
Salmon had but one or two houses, with the locality accessible only by 
way of Duane street or by a single narrow footbridge which spanned 
the river at a point almost due east from Monroe street. Forty years 
ago First street had but three or four houses, and Second, Third and 
Fourth streets had not been laid out at all. Still more recently the 
streets that diverge from Park to the west, and others that now parallel 
the latter, have been opened. As late as thirty years ago the Whittelsey 
and Short farms had but a couple of dwelling houses. Academy street 
was extended south from Francis hardly more than forty years since, 
and where streets now run from Webster to Duane there were still 
more recently only gardens, pastures and sugar orchards. The con- 
ditions west of Eockland and south of Franklin and west of Webster 
were very similar within my recollection. Now these localities are all 
thickly populated, and in some of them there are particularly attractive 
residential properties. 

A memoir of Dr. Theodore Gay, written by his son, William W., in 
1906, contains many matters of interest additional to the tribute by an 
admiring son to one of the exceptionally strong men of bis generation. 
After listing most of the residents on Elm street in the long ago, with 
description of their premises, Mr. Gay writes : " Every yard was 
jealously inclosed by high and usually disfiguring fences, many of them 
allowed to fall into a disgraceful state of decay, eyesores to the neat 
and orderly. It was not until about 1880 that Malone realized that it 
had been wasting money in expensive, useless and unpicturesque palings. 
The first to banish his fence was the late Luther Whitney. The second 
was Dr. Gay, whose example was speedily followed by others, the result 
being the pleasing, carefully kept, uninclosed and hospitable lawns 
which cheer the eye everywhere in the village." And referring to the 
fees which the doctor used to charge it is told that payments, if made 
at all, were mostly in produce. Among the credits on an account book 
in 1843 these are cited: Butter from several debtors at ten cents a 
pound; 30 pounds of veal at 2V 2 cents per pound; a pair of stockings 



Malone 439 

valued at $1 ; two bushels of buckwheat, $1 ; two bushels of apples at 
four shillings; 330 pounds of beef, $4.65; three bushels of oats at 25 
cents; 14 pounds of pork, $1.40; a sheep, $1.50; a quarter of veal, 73 
cents; and a pair of chickens at a shilling apiece. And such was the 
remuneration that a skillful physician received for village calls at 50 
cents each or for country visits at $1 to $1.50 each according to the 
distance traveled, and with the supplying of medicines included! 

School houses in the village were few until shortly before the civil 
war, and there was almost always a private or " select " school (some- 
times more than one) which found accommodations in a single room of 
some private house, and which were supported by tuition fees paid by 
the parents of the pupils who attended. 

Main street was lined formerly from end to end of the business sec- 
tion with hitching posts and rails. Besides being unsightly and unsani- 
tary, the arrangement made for cruelty to animals through leaving 
horses exposed for considerable lengths of time in all sorts of weather, 
narrowed the traffic width of the street, and increased danger in case of 
a runaway. After long and somewhat acrimonious agitation, the last 
of the posts and rails were removed about 1901. Many farmers scolded 
bitterly at the procedure, and some went so far as to transfer their 
trading to neighboring hamlets. "Who would restore the posts now if 
they could? 

Eeferring to this condition brings remembrance that in early times 
church sheds were thought to be as indispensable as a church itself. A 
considerable proportion of every congregation except St. Mark's resided 
in the country districts, and accommodations had to be provided for 
teams while the owners were at service. Sometimes a couple of neigh- 
bors would join in building a section of shed, which they kept under 
lock and key, but in general the sheds were wholly church property, and 
free for use by any one. St. Joseph's and the Methodist churches still 
maintain sheds. 

From about 1870 to 1890 Malone had a notably fine volunteer fire 
department. Though Malone Engine Co. No. 1 had ceased to maintain 
its aforetime interest and enthusiasm, the organization was still in 
existence until about 1880, and there were hose companies and a hook 
and ladder company zealous for service, and eager in their pride of 
organization and efficiency. Hope Hose Company was composed of 
young business men of high standing and social prominence, and Active 
Hose Company of yet younger men and boys of a like class. There was 
intense rivalry between these two organizations with respect to report- 



440 History of Franklin County 

ing first at a fire, and also in racing at firemen's tournaments. Each 
was accustomed to give occasional balls, which were always the society 
events of the season, and were as fine and enjoyable as good taste and 
generous expenditure could make them. But earlier than 1890 a good 
deal of the enthusiasm and interest had disappeared, and in that year 
an electric fire-alarm system was installed, and the department was 
reorganized into a paid service, with men and teams always at the 
engine house, with the consequence that little general interest is mani- 
fested. There was more fun under the old plan, but the new doubtless 
gives better results in respect to the saving of property. 

Malone was variantly Whig and Democratic before the civil war, 
with the margin usually close, but has since been Republican without 
variableness or shadow of turning. Of course the majorities have had 
a wide range, having approached a thousand once or twice, and now 
and then having dropped to a hundred or two. with the usual figure 
nearer the minimum than the maximum. The largest registration of 
voters ever entered for the town was in 1904, when it exceeded 3,000, 
and the vote the same year was nearly 2,100. 

Malone has usually been a " wet " town, but was nominally " dry " 
by determination of its own voters in 1816 and 1817, by the State 
statute of 1855 until the act was declared unconstitutional a year 
later, again in 1887 and 1888 by its own action, and now once more by 
a decisive vote in the spring of 1917. Quite probably prohibition pre- 
vailed in other years also of which I am not informed, but in general 
the " wets " have controlled — often without a contest, and easily even 
when a fight was made. In my boyhood and young manhood men of 
sterling character, with the widest opportunities for observation, used 
to tell me that conditions were worse under no-license than under 
license, and of my own knowledge that Avas the fact in 1887 and 1888. 
In the earlier experiences men who were accustomed to indulge in 
occasional drinking, or even in periodic " sprees," when liquor was 
easily procurable at home, bought the stuff in quantities in license 
localities, or at "blind tigers," and would keep "pickled " as long as the 
supply lasted. In 1888 the places where illicit traffic was prosecuted or 
individuals operated as " bootleggers" ran into the scores, and "bums" 
had no difficulty at all in supplying their wants, while decent people 
could not procure alcohol or brandy at all for legitimate uses, or in 
order to get it had to employ the offices of those who knew and could 
pull the ropes. There was no determined, dominating sentiment to 
compel regard for the law, and prohibition was nearer meaning free rum 



Malone 441 

than suppression or even restriction, so that the " dry " majority of 10 
in ISSr and of 242 in 1S88 became a "wet" majority of 500 in L889. 
Present conditions under the no-license regime which began with the 
first of October, 1917, are altogether different, and the change is prob- 
ably due principally to the better public sentiment that now obtains. 
So far as is known or even conjectured, there are no " blind tigers " or 
"bootleggers" at work; tradesmen report larger purchases and better 
payments by those whose earnings formerly went largely for drink; 
our streets are more orderly; the jail is all but empty; and the report 
of the village police justice for the month of November did not in I 
a single case of intoxication nor any other offense directly attributable 
to liquor. 

In 1906 a Captain Wenwright, a stranger, came to Malone, and 
announced his intention to build a trolley line from Malone Junction, 
via Westville and Fort Covington, to Hopkins Point on the St. Law- 
rence river. The village and the towns granted him a franchise, and 
considerable grading was done and ties and other material bought. A 
water power four or five miles north of Malone village was to be devel- 
oped for generating electric current for operation, and a spur was to 
lie built from West Constable to Trout Eiver. Difficulty was met in 
obtaining the approval of the State railroad commission, and after 
repeated delays and disappointments Captain Wenwright became dis- 
couraged and abandoned the undertaking. Several thousand dollars 
had been expended, however, on work and in the purchase of material, 
though very little of it came out of Captain Wenwright's pockets, but 
represented borrowings and credits. It transpired that he had prac- 
tically no means of his own, and that his expectation had been to finance 
the enterprise by issuing bonds. 

The Telegraph told in 1824 that there was jubilation in Malone 
because of the promise that thereafter the town should have a regular 
semi-weekly mail service, with receipt of Albany papers within five 
days of the date of their publication ; but a year later no mail at all 
had been received for five days, and it was many years before there was 
a really good service. Complaint was common in 1837 that mail arrived 
from Albany only in six to eleven days, and that manv times the bags 
were found to be empty; and as late as 1857 it took three weeks to get 
a letter to and a reply from Duane, and newspapers from Malone were 
two weeks in reaching subscribers at Saranac Lake. It was not until 
1835 that the people even thought of asking for a dailv mail, and in 
examining the lists of letters advertised as uncalled for' at that period 



442 History of Franklin County 

and earlier one wonders if it really mattered much whether there were 
mails once a day, one a month or once a year, for included in such lists 
appeared always the names of some of the most prominent men in the 
town — merchants, farmers living within a mile of the office who were 
so well known that they were leaders in their respective circles, and 
even clergymen and physicians. Postage was payable either in advance 
at the mailing point or at the destination by the addressee, and in view 
of the well known scarcity of money then prevalent it is probable that 
most letters came collect, and that these long lists were due to the 
disinclination or the inability of the addressees to pay the postage due. 

The board of supervisors caused notice to be published in 1824 that 
unless assurances were given that the court house would be cleaned after 
its use by the various religious societies or private organizations it would 
be closed against everybody except for distinctively public and official 
business. The next year the sheriff published a notice apportioning the 
use of the building for purposes of worship — one-half of the time to 
the Congregationalists because they were the most numerous, and one- 
fourth each to the Baptists and Methodists. The notice discloses that 
there had been bickering between the denominations concerning the 
degree of use of the court house that they should respectively enjoy, and 
also as to the responsibility of each for its cleaning. In the hope of 
ending such strife the sheriff made the apportionment as stated, and 
announced that he would not enforce the resolution of the supervisors, 
but would have the building cleaned at his own expense. 

The population of the village in 1835, more than thirty years after 
the arrival of the first settlers, was only 104, which had increased in 
1840 to 670, and in 1853, when the village was incorporated, to 2,039. 
In 1855 it was 1,993, and in 1860 exactly 3,000. While every census 
since then has shown some growth, there has never been anything like 
a " boom " as the word is understood in the West. The population in 
1915. was 7,404, of whom 283 were aliens. Soon after incorporation 
the village bought a new fire engine, of the hand-brake type, which 
cost, with hose, $1,427. The machine had its own suction pipe, and would 
do good work while men endured to pump it. There was no system 
of water works then, and cisterns for fire uses were built at a cost of 
$311.25 at the Congregational church, near Memorial Park, at the Meth- 
odist church (then at the corner of Main and Fort Covington streets), 
and near the academy. The organization of old Malone Engine Co. 
No. 1 in its early life was a distinguished one, and included practically 
every man of affairs and prominence in the village. Its meetings were 



Malone 443 

animated and rollicking with innocent fun, and its annual suppers were 
notable social affairs. It disbanded in 1881, and the engine was sold to 
Ellenburgh in 1901 for $250. 

A notice published by the village trustees in 1855 required the build- 
ing of sidewalks on a number of specified streets, but not on Elm or 
Main — from which it is concluded that these had already been so 
equipped. East Main street was formerly Church street, West Main 
was Court street, and Pearl originally Horton and then King street. 

Dr. Bates wrote of early Malone that it was a rare thing to see people 
out riding on Sunday, and that " after the churches closed the streets 
were empty, and a peaceful silence reigned. When the sun went down the 
Sabbath was ended. The womenfolk resumed their usual occupations 
of knitting, mending and spinning." Bev. James Erwin, who conducted 
protracted revival services here in 1836, wrote: "The people of that 
town were great church goers. I have had a wide observation of the 
church going habits of people in many sections of the country, but never 
found any other town that excelled Malone in that respect. * * * The 
good people of Malone came from far and near *' to worship in His holy 
temple.' Every church was usually crowded. * * * Those from 
a distance brought the largest loads, and usually were the first to arrive 
at the church. I have often held up the custom of that town as an 
example for other communities to follow." How gratified would be the 
pastors of our churches to-day, and what an inspiration it would be 
to them in their pulpits, if this condition now obtained. But apparently 
a change began to appear within the dozen years succeeding the period 
of which Mr. Erwin spoke, for in 1858 a correspondent of the Palladium 
complained of Sabbath desecration by ball playing, neglect of church 
attendance, etc., as having "sprang up within ten years." Moreover, 
the tendency noted in 1858 has continued progressively ever since. 

Malone had telegraphic service first in 1851, or about a year after 
the railroad was finished. 

While the only early iron works of consequence were the forge at 
" whiskey hollow," there yet were others of a sort both earlier and 
later, the history of some of which, however, is fragmentary and to some 
extent obscure. In 1815 "Tough" Hastings, whose real name, I think, 
was Levi, had a large blacksmith shop and triphammer works at 
the west end of the Horton dam, just off Duane street. An angry 
helper one day struck him with an iron bar, breaking the frontal bone 
and destroying one eye. He was left for dead, but made a quick 
recovery, and soon afterward pitched headforemost into a well. His 



444 History of Franklin County 

head was badly cut and bruised, and when, regaining consciousness, 
the surgeon inquired if he was suffering pain, he replied in the negative, 
adding that he was not subject to headache. Always thereafter he was 
known as " Tough." How long he operated the Duane street concern 
is not known, but twenty years later it or another building on or near 
the same site was a scythe and axe factory, of which William B. Earle 
was the proprietor. It was in the same building that Mr. Gorton had 
his paper mill for about ten years from 1820, and also, somewhat later, 
Abijah White a pail factory in which he turned out four hundred pails 
a week. The building long known as " Earle's museum " was erected 
by Mr. Earle for the help that he employed in the scythe and axe 
factory. Samuel Field had an establishment in 1829, at a location not 
now known, where he cast plows, and Oren Moses, Sr., and son, Myron, 
had a foundry in a building that occupied the site of the creamery 
(formerly a starch factory) on Water street. Besides making castings 
this shop manufactured rifles and also built a hand fire engine very like 
the old Malone No. 1. Samuel Hyde had a machine shop and Oren U. 
Beach (father of Manley L.) a foundry at or near the Hastings- 
Earle plant, which Mr. Beach operated from about 1840 to 1853, when 
the equipment was sold to Charles C. Whittelsey and Daniel N. Hunt- 
ington, and removed to a building erected for it at the foot of Foundry 
(now Shepherd) street, near the freight depot. Whether S. C. F. 
Thorndike and William H. Keeler were also partners in the 'business 
I am unable to ascertain, but at least they were joint purchasers with 
Mr. Whittelsey and Mr. Huntington of springs west of Webster street 
and south of the cemetery, which were piped to the foundry. The 
same year that this concern was started Charles B. Beardsley and 
Andrew S. Keeler built the foundry and machine shops which still 
stand on Catherine street. Mr. Huntington having sold to Mr. Whit- 
telsey, the latter bought the Catherine street works, abandoning his 
own shops, and operated them until 1883. The date of his deed to the 
latter property was 1859, but he may have had possession a little 
earlier. During his proprietorship he had at different times a number 
of partners — among them Carlos D. Meigs, and Hiram E. and Charles 
Perkins, and his son, Sidney S. In 1876 he leased to his son. Sidney 
Si, and Chester H. Wead, and in 1881 sold to J. C. Saunders, Sidney 
S. Whittelsey, Malachi H. Barry, Charles Fury and Leslie C. and 
Chester H. Wead. The property has since had various owners rn.ii, 
first and last, has done a considerable business — making stoves, steam 
engines, Ivniffen mowing machines, wood pulp grinders, and now 



Malone 445 

bodies for motor trucks. Its present owners are the Thomas Hinds 
Company. 

Additional Local Industries 

Industries other than those heretofore listed on the Duane street lot 
include a flax mill by Simeon J. Harwood in 1864 and 1865, when the 
price of cotton was soaring, and planing mills by John E. Jackson and 
J. L. Iveeney, Ladd, Smallman & Wentworth, and P. J. Murtagh. 

Jonathan Stearns, merchant for many years, began planning in 1826 
to erect a cotton factory — a strange undertaking considering the dis- 
tance that the raw material had to be brought in a time when there 
were no railroads, nor water communication nearer than Plattsburgh. 
Nevertheless he had his building completed in the early autumn of 
1829 — a solid masonry structure rising sixty feet from the river level 
at the Main street bridge, and with the upper room furnished with 
wooden benches, so that it might be available for religious uses and 
other public meetings. The building is now owned and occupied by 
the Malone Light and Power Company. In 1834 the mill made 
177,777 yards of cloth, and the product, though coarse, is said to have 
been of good quality. But high freights (the rate from Plattsburgh to 
Malone used to be $2.75 per one hundred pounds) and other handicaps 
made operation unprofitable, and in 1841 Mr. Stearns was forced into 
bankruptcy. Three or four years later Hugh Magill and William 
Greene purchased the mill, and ran it until the "interior and the 
machinery were destroyed by fire March 13, 1846, with a loss of $50,000, 
on which the insurance was only $16,000. The walls of the building 
remained intact, and for a year or two the village had hope that the 
industry might be revived. But Mr. Magill and Mr. Greene having 
been crippled by their loss, and no one appearing to engage in the 
enterprise, the building, or a part of it, was converted into a mill for 
grinding gypsum for land plaster, and was otherwise variously occupied 
until 1864, when' Mr. Whittelsey and Charles Paddock made it into a 
woolen factory, which they called the Union Mills. As a cotton factory 
it had employed as many as a hundred hands in times of its greatest 
activity. Mr. Magill removed after the fire to Illinois, where lie made 
full financial recovery ; Mr. Greene remained in Malone, and for many 
years was engaged in the liquor traffic on Harison place, where Rush- 
ford now has a second-hand store. Upon the retirement of Mr. Paddock 
in 1868 Mr. Whittelsey continued the business alone under the name of 
the Malone Woolen Mills until 1887, when a stock company was formed 



446 History of Franklin County 

to continue the business and also to engage in the manufacture of 
men's clothing, but the enterprise was not a financial success. In 1890 
the factory was leased to Jay 0. Ballard and William C. Skinner, who 
continued to operate it until their removal to their present location. 
An electric plant was installed in the building by S. S. Whittelsey in 
1907, and operated by him for a time. It was sold in 1909 to the 
Malone Light and Power Co. 

William King built a potato starch mill in the village in 1844 or 
1845, which I am confident was the first in the county. It was located 
on Catherine street, on a part of the lot now occupied by The Lawrence- 
Webster Co. woolen mill and garment factory ; and after operation for 
seven or eight years in the manufacture of starch was idle until con- 
verted into a machine shop. Other starch mills that the town has had 
at one time or another have been : One on Eoaring brook, one near the 
church at Chasm Falls, and one just above Whippleville, all built and 
owned by George W. Hale, though William Lyman and Sherman 
Stancliff had had one earlier at the last indicated point; one south of 
Shepherd bridge and one in the Berry district in the northwest part of 
the town, by W. W. & H. E. King; one on the Branch stream, two 
miles south of the village, by George N. Keeler; one in the village, 
opposite The Lawrence-Webster Co. mills, by George N. Keeler and 
Stephen D. Paddock ; and one on Trout river, in the northeast quarter 
of the town, which was owned in its final days by Hubbard & Mallon. 
The business ceased to be profitable about 1896 by reason of competition 
of starch made from corn, and I think that none of the Malone mills 
was run after 1898, though a few like mills in other towns were 
operated irregularly and occasionally until 1905. 

The quarrying of sandstone was at one time a considerable industry. 
The most important of the quarries was west of Duane street, in the 
outskirts of the village, and was developed earlier than 1850. It was 
worked extensively following the building of the railroad, with Denni- 
son S. Willard as superintendent — the owner at that time having been 
T. P. Chandler, the president of the old Northern Eailroad Company. 
It employed thirty to forty men, and the stone was shipped in large 
quantities to Boston and other New England cities, and also even as 
far west as Chicago — Mr. Chandler finding the markets for it. It 
was used largely at home also, the old jail and county clerk's office, the 
railroad machine shops and freight depot, the Knapp or Commercial 
block, the King block and many other buildings having been con- 
structed with it. Another quarry which promised at one time to be 
valuable is on the Branch stream on the Keeler (now Shields) farm. 



Malone 447 

The stone here is of a handsome pink shade and takes a fine polish, but 
some of it crumbles and shales upon exposure to air. It was while 
working this latter quarry that Albert Broughton invented a machine 
for polishing stone which produced a surface as smooth as glass, whereas 
the process theretofore employed gave the stone a scratched finish, 
resembling the surface of sawed lumber. The machine was patented, 
•and was found adaptable to polishing glass also, which work had had 
to be done theretofore by hand. Captain Alexander Lindsay acquired 
an interest in the patent, and sold rights under it in England and 
elsewhere. 

The Duane paint bed, which is on the west side of Salmon river, a 
short distance above Shepherd bridge, was discovered in 1850, and was 
worked for a number of years by Henry B. Duane. The works con- 
sisted only of a mill for grinding the metal and a kiln for drying it. 
This paint was used largely all through this section, more particularly 
on barns and outbuildings, and was very durable. It was a reddish 
brown in color. The mill was burned in 1870, at which time it was 
owned by R. S. Brown and Marshall D. Abbott, but had been in disuse 
for several years. 

Tittjsville, Glen Hope or Chasm Falls 

Titusville dates as a settlement from 1831, when Mr. Titus of New 
York city began acquiring wilderness lands in Franklin county, and 
continued his purchases until, thirty-odd years later, he owned some- 
thing like forty thousand acres, which subsequently became the prop- 
erty of A. B. Parmelee & Son. He gave the name Glen Hope to the 
locality, which changed into Titusville, and is now Chasm Falls, and 
built a store, a saw mill and a grist mill at the head of the falls on the 
east side of the river, and a scythe factory on the west side. Newell M. 
Cunningham (father of Bussell J.) came in 1832 from Massachusetts 
to have charge of the scythe factory, and was joined in 1833 by his 
cousin, William B. Earle, who worked with him until he removed to 
Malone village, and there started a like factory of his own. The Glen 
Hope factory was sold to Meigs & Wead, and later to Mr. Cunningham, 
who moved it down the stream, and operated it on his own account for 
several years, and until scythes came to be made by machinery, which 
drove out the hand-made product. The equipment of the grist mill 
was sold to Harvey Whipple, who removed it to Whippleville, and 
installed it in a mill that he had built at that hamlet. The saw mill 
was owned in turn by William King, Meigs & Wead, S. C. Wead and 



448 History of Franklin County 

Buel H. Man, Mr. Titus again, and A. B. Parmelee & Son. Twenty- 
odd years ago the saw mill and a considerable tract of adjacent land 
were bought for ten thousand dollars by Syracuse parties, who planned 
a large development of some kind, with suggestion that it would 
employ enough help so that a village would spring up. They made 
something of a mystery of their intentions, and either because of their 
own financial reverses or inability to enlist other capital the expected 
enterprise was not undertaken, though a survey was made for a rail- 
road spur to connect with the Adirondack and St. Lawrence at Stan- 
cliffs siding, and the lands around the head of the falls were plotted 
into village lots. The property stood idle thereafter until sold at a 
handsome advance in price in 1913 to a corporation which was sub- 
sequently merged into the Malone Light and Power Company, when 
the largest and finest power development in the county, with the possible 
exception of the Paul Smith work at Franklin Falls, was instituted. 
A concrete dam was built, and from it a steel penstock six feet in 
diameter led down the stream for two-thirds of a mile — giving a head 
of 270 feet at the power house, which, the river having been turned into 
a new channel, is built in the old bed. The work is fine and thorough 
throughout, and its potentialities are a generation of 3,500 horse power. 
The expenditure on the undertaking, inclusive of cost of lands and 
water privilege and of the transmission line for a distance of nine miles 
to the village of Malone, was about $425,000. In June, 1911, an over- 
flow at the old dam, which an hour's work applied in time might have 
rendered harmless, wrecked a part of the penstock, and destroyed 
entirely the county highway for a considerable distance — necessitating 
building the latter anew over a different route. The company's damage 
was about $10,000, and that to the road nearly $6,000. Great as the 
work here is, only a very small force of men is required to care for it 
and operate it, and consequently it has not added appreciably to the 
population. Except that there is an increased number of farmers in 
the vicinity, the place is no larger than it was eighty years ago. Apart 
from the farms and the electric plant, there are in the locality only a 
creamery, a store, a Methodist Episcopal church, a Eoman Catholic 
church, and a so-called hotel, which of course had no custom except at 
its bar, and now that the town has become " dry " is likely to disappear. 

Whippleville 

"Whippleville, three miles. south of the village, "is the only hamlet in 
the town. Though the locality had perhaps half a dozen settlers at an 



Malone 449 

earlier date, the place had its real birth in 1837 or 1838 with the pur- 
chase of most of the surrounding lands by Harvey Whipple, who chose 
to make his home there because of the water power and because the 
country thereabout was a forest. Mr. Whipple built a saw mill early, 
which is still in operation, with a planing mill added, and afterward 
a grist mill, equipping the latter from the mill at Titusville. Zenas 
Heath was lessor and operator of the grist mill in 1842, and in 1849 
Mr. Whipple sold a third interest in it to Samuel A. Culver. It has 
had many owners since that time, was rebuilt in 1868 by John A. 
Hogle and Henry M. Tobey, and is now run by Fred H. Lyman. The 
saw mill also has passed through many ownerships, and is at present 
the property of Fred. H. Lyman. Another saw mill, run by steam, was 
built by Scott G. Boyce and William W. Wheeler, and was burned. A 
tannery was erected in 1860 by Mr. Whipple for Enoch Miller, who 
operated it for several years. It was burned in 1882, at which time it 
was owned by P. D. Moore & Co. of Boston, and was about to be 
abandoned. In 1872 John A. Hogle was induced to build a two-story- 
and-a-half-hotel for Merrill Hungerford, his son-in-law, and Egbert 
Piatt, who ran it for a time, but without profit. It was kept afterward 
by S. Boutwell, and then by Mrs. Hogle, but never did much business. 
It burned about fifteen or twenty years ago. The hamlet had two 
hotels in 1917 which were opened more for the sale of liquor than for 
a general accommodation of guests ; but the town having become " dry " 
one of them closed at once, and the other soon afterward. There are 
two stores in the settlement, and always from about 1860 there has 
been one or more, kept by almost as many proprietors as the period 
numbers years. The hamlet contains forty dwelling houses, and has 
an estimated population of about one hundred and fifty. The school 
district is slightly larger than the hamlet proper, and the school has 
twenty-nine enrolled pupils. 

Other Industries 

Industries other than those already mentioned that Malone has had 
at one time or another, but which are not now in existence, include : 

Brick-making by Jacob Wead, and then by Meigs & Wead, at " whis- 
key hollow," some ninety years ago ; in the eastern part of the town by 
Henry M. Tobey, Andrew Dumas, Joseph Dumas, J. Dennison Fisk, 
0. U. Beach, Richards, Prescott and Philip Patnode, Ches- 
ter Nash, and Alfred A. Rounds, the latter of whom had an output 
in 1868 and 1869 of fifty to sixty thousand brick per day; by Bell & 
15 



450 History of Franklin County 

Colton just off West Main street at about the same time with Bounds; 
and by Joseph Dumas later on Constable street. Mr. Bounds has many 
monuments in the town as a builder, including the Butland passenger 
station, the poorhouse, the courthouse and the Centenary Methodist 
Episcopal church. 

Planing mills and general woodworking establishments by Martin 
Kearney, and later by Charles A. Burke and John Kelley, on Catherine 
street; by Orville Moore on Milwaukie street and afterward on Pearl 
street; and successively by John B. Jackson and J. L. Keeney, Ladd, 
Smallman & Wentworth, A. M. Erwin & Co., and P. J. Murtagh on 
Duane street. 

A small broom factory, established soon after the civil war by Frank 
Benoit, and worked by him individually for something like thirty 
years, until 1908, when a corporation organized therefor took it over, 
and Samuel Benoit, son of the founder, was made manager. Difficulty 
in obtaining supplies of broom-corn interfered with full success, and 
the factory was closed in 1916. 

A match factory, which was a good deal of a joke, by T. B. Cushman, 
employing no one except himself and daughter, and turning out a 
product more adapted to kindling profanity than for starting a fire. 

A slaughter house and pork packing establishment north of the vil- 
lage in 1880 by 1ST. P. Gravell & Co., which was to have a capacity of 
three hundred hogs a day, and was to compete in this section with the 
big Chicago packers. It was not a success. 

A stone flouring mill, five stories in height, near the Gravell plant, 
which was begun by George F. Dickey in 1868 and finished in 1870, 
with the expectation that it would have an output comparable with 
that of the large mills at Oswego and Bochester. It was too big a 
proposition for Mr. Dickey's means, however, and the property soon 
went into the hands of Henry A. Paddock. About 1882 it was bought 
and run by A. Munger for a number of years. For a time it did an 
ordinary country mill business, and after Mr. Munger's death was 
converted into an excelsior mill. It burned in 1911. 

A flax mill on Duane street by S. J. Harwood in 1864 and 1865. 

A soap factory near the Butland Bailroad freight depot by Baker 
S. Horrigan and George D. Lytle. 

A plant for making trousers and other garments for men, established 
on Amsden street in 1898 by a corporation styled The Malone Manu- 
facturing Company. The business was not profitable, and was 
discontinued after a few years. 






Malone 451 

Industries Now in Operation 

In addition to the industries heretofore listed and described (viz., 
the Garner & Co. tannery, the Horton grist mill and the foundry) 
works now in operation comprise : 

Malone's first woolen mill was built by John Horton of Madrid and 
Hiram Horton of Malone, but whether they ever operated it themselves 
is now unknown. They sold it under contract in 1844 to John Starks, 
who had previously had a similar mill at Fort Covington, and he sold 
a half interest in it the next year to George A. Cheney, who apparently 
had active connection with its operation for only a short time, as 
Cyrenus Gorton soon became Mr. Starks's partner. Starks & Gorton 
evidently failed to prosper, for in 1849 they made an assignment, with 
debts, exclusive of mortgages and judgments, amounting to over six 
thousand dollars. The property was sold in 1850 by the assignee to 
D. Stiles McMillan and Theodore Eogers of Fort Covington for $3,810 
plus outstanding obligations of $2,274, which they assumed. Mr. 
McMillan bought out Mr. Eogers after a short time, and then continued 
the business alone successfully until 1863, when he sold and removed 
to Wisconsin to engage still more prosperously in lumbering. Not only 
was " Mac " a very prince of good fellows and a man of hustling busi- 
ness proclivities, but he proved to be a manufacturer whose goods 
gained a reputation throughout this section for durability that was 
unsurpassed. Though rough and of plain patterns, his cloths wore like 
iron. The establishment has grown into a big factory, owned and oper- 
ated by a corporation styled The Lawrence- Webster Company, valued 
at tens of thousands of dollars, and all of its cloths since 1885 have 
been made into garments on the ground, with sales extending all over 
the world, and with a pay-roll bearing a hundred names or more. 

Jay 0. Ballard & Co. have a woolen mill and men's garments factory 
on the site of the old Parmelee saw mill, with surrounding grounds 
handsomely laid out and kept — making, with the well lighted and 
sanitary buildings, one of the most attractive industrial establishments 
to be found anywhere. This concern began operations in 1891 in the 
old Whittelsey mill at the bridge on Main street, and continued there 
until 1901, when it bought at its new location, erected suitable buildings, 
and installed all new and modern equipment. It has had a remarkable 
success, employs a hundred and fifteen to one hundred and twenty 
hands, and would work a still larger force if procurable. 

In 1872 Samuel C. Wead began the erection north of the village of 
a paper mill for the manufacture of wrapping paper from straw. The 



452 History of Franklin County 

project assumed proportions as the work progressed far exceeding Mr. 
Wead's original expectations, and involved a heavy expenditure. The 
plan was changed, a pulp mill was added, and the output became news 
instead of wrapping paper. After Mr. Wead's death the business was 
continued by his heirs, but after a time passed into outside hands, who 
failed to make it a success. Finally the plant was closed, remained idle 
for a time, and was sold under foreclosure. In 1900 it was bought by 
Brayton E. Clark and other Jefferson county gentlemen for five thou- 
sand dollars, the merest fraction of its cost, and after a time the pulp 
mill at Chasm Falls was also acquired. The paper mill has been oper- 
ated since 1901 by a corporation entitled the Malone Paper Company, 
capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars, and was practically rebuilt 
and new machinery installed. The mill was burned in 1903, and was 
soon replaced. The pulp mills have been demolished, and a sulphite 
equipment added in their place. The investment has paid handsomely, 
and the mill employs about one hundred hands. 

The Eutland Eailroad machine shops were built in 1857. The 
number of men employed in them has varied considerably in the past, 
depending in part upon whether the business of the road was active 
or dull, and also in part upon the interests that were in control. When 
the road was under lease to the Central Vermont, most of the machinery 
was removed to St. Albans, and only a handful of men found work here, 
at short hours and small pay. At one time all of the locomotives and 
passenger coaches and freight cars of the road were made at Malone, 
but now operations consist mainly in making repairs. In the old days 
a hundred and fifty men or more were employed, and the present number 
is about one hundred and twenty. 

The Adirondack and St. Lawrence Bailway Company also has shops 
at Malone Junction, which give employment to between thirty and 
forty men. It is intended that these shops shall be enlarged and 
equipped with additional machinery, so that they may handle all of the 
repairs of the division instead of sending the worst wrecks to Oswego. 

In addition to the employment afforded in their shops, both the Eut- 
land and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence make Malone headquarters 
for many of their train crews and bridge and track gangs. 

The American Hide and Leather Company has a station at Malone 
which treats and reships all of the hides and tallow bought by it between 
New Hampshire and Syracuse. It keeps eight or ten men busy. 

Planing mills and sash, door and trim factories are owned and oper- 
ated by John Kelley on Amsden street, Charles Boardway on Water 
street, and Cyrel Dupree on Pearl street. 



Malone 453 

The Malone Shirt Company was incorporated in 1901 to manufac- 
ture shirts from material to be supplied and cut by the big factories in 
Troy, and has since been operated with varying degrees of success. It 
has a building on Duane street erected expressly for the business, and i8 
at present driven with orders. It employs about eighty girls, who make 
excellent earnings, and would increase the force considerably if 
additional girls could be found to take on the work. 

The same parties who are in control of the shirt factory recently 
formed the Malone Broom Company, Inc., with W. L. French as 
president, Morton P. House vice-president, J. E. McSorley secretary, 
W. H. Gibson treasurer, and Samuel Benoit superintendent. It is 
hoped to interest farmers in growing broom-corn, and thus to secure 
the raw material locally for operating.* 

In 1907 Kirk-Maher Company succeeded Symonds & Allison in 
manufacturing ice cream and candy, the volume of business at that 
time running under a hundred thousand dollars a year. Growth has 
been enjoyed until branch ice cream factories were established in 1917 
at Plattsburgh and at Watertown. The annual sales at the home fac- 
tory have mounted considerably until they now reach three hundred 
thousand dollars, about equally divided between ice cream and candy. 
Something like fifteen thousand gallons of cream are used yearly at 
Malone, and incidentally it is of interest to note that the existence of 
this and other similar establishments, supplying a luxury, explains in 
part the scarcity and high prices of butter and cheese. 

The Malone Bronze Powder Company, Inc., was organized in June, 
1916, by Canadian capitalists who have a factory at Valleyfield, Que., 
which had been sending considerable quantities of bronze and aluminum 
powders to the United States, with payment of heavy rates of duty. In 
order to develop further the business in the United States, as well as 
to save the customs duties, a factory was established at the Junction 
in Malone; almost before it had been completed an enlargement of it 
was begun, and a second is now building. These works employ about 
thirty hands, with Merton P. House of Malone as resident manager, and 
are prosperous. 

The Malone Lumber Company was incorporated in 1906 with a 
capital of $15,000 to deal in lumber and building materials, and estab- 
lished yards and a finishing shop at the Junction. The property was 
sold in 1917 to Berton L. Reynolds and Charles W. Wilding, who 



* The business has been sold to Canadian interests, which have transferred 
the plant to Malone Junction, and added materially to its capacity. 



454 History of Franklin County 

continue the business as a partnership under the corporate name of 
the original concern. The plant employs ten or a dozen men. 

Of course there are also marble, wheelwright and blacksmith shops 
and small cigar factories, such as are usually common to most small 
places. 

If the list seems scant in proportion to the population of the town 
and village, suggesting the query whether the professions and trades- 
men are out of balance with the manual workers, there can be no 
answer other than confession, with admission that practically every 
citizen wishes that there were more factory chimneys and more utilized 
water powers, and a larger number of carriers of dinner pails. Never- 
theless the facts stand in evidence that a substantial prosperity prevails ; 
that growth has been continuous through a great many years; that 
while none are very rich the people generally are in comfortable cir- 
cumstances; that as a rule the merchants are prospering; that those in 
the professions are earning reasonably satisfactory incomes ; that seldom 
does a house stand vacant for any length of time ; and that the two 
banks in the village have combined deposits exceeding a million and 
a half dollars. What are the underlying sources of this strength and 
so gratifying conditions it would be difficult to declare fully and with 
precision. The shops are a part of course, and that Malone is the shire 
town of the county, and appreciably larger and more attractive than 
any other place within sixty miles to the east or west, and nearly twice 
that distance across barrier mountains to the south, with no competing 
point at all on the north, explains a good deal more. Much of the 
surrounding country is good farming lands, tributary to this market. 
Our churches and schools are magnets constantly attracting people 
from smaller places, so that they and their children may enjoy a 
pleasanter environment and greater educational advantages ; and that 
the village has all of the advantages incident to an excellent public 
library, a fine general hospital, the maintenance of a uniformed police 
for the protection of persons and property, a fire department that is 
nowhere excelled, an unrivaled water system, superior gas and electric 
lighting plants, two lines of railway, and practically no town debt 
except its share of county bonds issued for building substantial high- 
ways, must also be deemed of large importance. In a word, there seems 
to be lacking but a single requisite essential to a progressive municipal- 
ity ; and that is a comprehensive public sewer system. In lieu of it, 
however, many streets are cared for by sewers installed and maintained 
by individual associations. 



Malone 455 

Water Works 
Until 1857 the village inhabitants were wholly dependent for their 
water supply upon the river, cisterns, wells and springs. Baptiste 
Monteau had a hogshead on a truck in which he conveyed water to 
families from the river, and it was customary for many families to 
fetch water in pails from springs or their neighbors' wells (both of 
which were more numerous then than now) for drinking uses. In 
1857 the Malone Water-Works Company was incorporated, and pur- 
chased a spring, flowing a hundred thousand gallons a day, south of 
the village, as a source of supply. Mains which were supposed at the 
time to be abundantly large, but which proved to be wretchedly insuffi- 
cient, were laid along the principal streets, and it was thought that 
provision had been made to cover all domestic and fire needs of the 
village " for generations to come ;" but less than twenty years had 
elapsed when clamor for more water began to be insistent, and after a 
time another spring near by, and then still another, to the east, and 
even the Branch stream, were added one after another to the system. 
Still the supply was inadequate, and the head for fire purposes miser- 
ably insufficient. In 1888 the water company was reorganized, with a 
considerable increase of capital, the Horse brook, seven miles south in 
the Adirondack foothills, and fed altogether by springs, became the 
principal source of supply, with mains of a capacity to deliver a million 
gallons a day at the reservoir, which was located on the Pinnacle, near 
the village, at an elevation that affords a pressure of ninety pounds in 
the business center. Though there is no finer system anywhere, nor 
any purer water, which, however, would be preferable if it were less 
"hard," there is still complaint at times that the quantity is insuffi- 
cient. The village acquired the works by purchase at a cost of $225,000 
in 1906, and the revenue from rentals is enough to meet interest obli- 
gations and to cover payment of bonds as they come due, as well as 
to cover expenditures for maintenance and extensions. The village has 
no other indebtedness except about $75,000 for brick paving. 

The Hotels 
Eeal or so-called hotels have been numerous in Malone, though most 
of -them call for but scant mention. The very earliest were apparently 
outside of the village limits, and were for the accommodation of immi- 
grants bound westward for settlement. One was kept for a year or 
two about 1805 on the north road near the Bangor line by Jehiel Berry, 
and another at about the same time by Oliver Brewster on the same 



456 History of Franklin County 

road at the top of the hill west of the village. A few years later John 
Daggett (grandfather of Ferdinand L.) had one on what is now the 
poor house farm, and Bronson Keeler one a mile west of Whippleville. 
So far as I know there were never any taverns in the country east or 
north of the village, nor until recently any south with the exception of 
Mr. Keeler's and also one at Whippleville built in 1872. 

In the village the first hotel, built by Cone Andrus earlier than 1807, 
was near the railroad, on a part of the lot now occupied by the Howard 
House, which was a tavern or hotel stand for more than a century. 
Its first landlord was Abijah Abbott, the second a Captain Perry, the 
third Benjamin Seeley, and the fourth Obadiah T. Hosford, who sold 
to Abel H. ("White") Miller. In 1851 while continuing to use the 
uld structure, Mr. Miller built the brick hotel that was burned in 1866, 
which he called at first the Malone House and subsequently the Frank- 
lin House, and which was connected with the original hotel by a wing. 
After Mr. Miller the establishment had a number of landlords, includ- 
ing Charles Nash and James L. Hogle. It was replaced after the fire 
by the Ferguson House and Empire Block, one of the most imposing 
structures ever erected in the town. Then Oliver Howard purchased 
it, and was its owner when it burned in 1888. A year or two later Mr. 
Howard rebuilt, and for twenty years and more the house was the 
principal hotel of the place. It has been vacant as such since 1914. 

Joel Amsden had an early hotel in the village, nearly opposite the 
Baptist church, and a few years later built another, which he called the 
Franklin House, about where the Commercial or Paddock Block is, 
and William Cleveland had a tavern on Webster street, just north of 
Franklin street. The latter became a private residence, and was burned 
in 1882. 

The date of the building of the Appleton Foote tavern, where the 
armory stands, is not ascertainable with certainty, but was probably 
1807 or 1808 ; unquestionably before 1810. It flourished until the 
winter of 1813-14, when it was taken for a hospital for the sick of 
General Wilkinson's army, and afterward, for a day or two, as head- 
quarters for the British commandant who raided this locality in the 
winter of 1814. It was never reopened as a hotel, but was occupied by 
Mr. Foote as a residence until his death, and then by James W. Sawyer. 
When the armory was built it was moved to Franklin street, and a part 
of it now occupies the lot on the north side of the street next west from 
Webster street. Mrs. Foote was from New Jersey, and as a child had 
carried water to the Continental soldiers during the memorable battle 
of Monmouth. 



Malone 457 

The Miller House, originally a dwelling house, enlarged and con- 
verted into a hotel by Orlando Furness, stood where the Flanagan 
House now is, and for a long time was the leading inn of Malone. 
Philip B. ("Black") Miller kept it after Mr. Furness, and it was 
there that Alexander Flanagan made his reputation as a landlord. In 

1866 and again in 1870 it was the Fenian headquarters when raids upon 
Canada were contemplated or attempted, and was also headquarters for 
Generals Meade, McDowell and others when they came here with troops 
in Fenian times to compel observance of the neutrality law. The 
building almost tumbled down. 

The Flanagan Block, built for stores and offices and now so used, 
was made to serve for hotel purposes by the Flanagans for a time about 
a third of a century ago, following the burning of the Ferguson House. 

The Smith House, opposite the court house, was built about 1866 or 

1867 by James L. Hogle, who was its landlord for a number of years. 
Since his occupancy it has had no end of managers — most of whom 
failed to make it pay. It is now managed by Fred A. Smith, and has a 
good business. 

The original Methodist Episcopal church at the corner of Main and 
Fort Covington streets was made a boarding house and later a hotel 
by Alonzo R. Paddock soon after the new church was erected in 1866. 
Frank A. Eldredge succeeded Mr. Paddock, and for several years past 
Charles H. Moody has been the proprietor. The house has never had 
a bar, nor until now has it particularly sought custom other than 
boarders and county transients. In 1917 and 1918 Mr. Moody greatly 
enlarged the building, and improved many of its interior arrangements 
and equipment — making it an attractive structure architecturally and 
enabling him to offer guests fine accommodations. It is called the 
Franklin House, the third in Malone to bear that name. 

In 1872 John A. Hogle erected a two-story-and-a-half hotel building 
at Whippleville for his son-in-law, Merrill Hungerford, and Egbert 
Piatt, who ran it for a few years, and were succeeded by S. Boutwell 
and Mrs. Hogle. It had little custom of a hotel character, and its 
business was more properly that of a boarding house. The building 
burned fifteen or twenty years ago. 

In 1875 James L. Hogle bought the old William King homestead at 
the corner of Main and Pearl streets, which had been in use as a fur- 
niture store, enlarged it, made many alterations to adapt it to hotel 
purposes, and ran it for many years as the Elmwood House. Henry A. 
Gray, now county superintendent of highways, came into possession in 



458 History of Franklin County 

1898, refitted and refurnished the house, changed its name to The 
Olympia, and six months after his opening the property was entirely 
destroyed by fire. 

After the Eaines law was enacted a number of places were opened 
on Catherine street and at outside points in the town which were termed 
hotels solely that the privilege of selling liquor might be obtained, and 
some of them became no better than pest holes. At one time there were 
a dozen or more pseudo hotels in the town, about some of which the less 
is said the better. Happily most of them are now closed by reason of 
the town having voted " dry/' 

John Soper built a hotel at the Junction something like fifteen years 
ago. It is still running, and has a considerable custom. 

The new Hotel Flanagan, on the site of the old Miller House, and 
the most modern and probably the largest hotel in Northern New York, 
was begun in 1913, and opened in July, 1914, by Samuel J., John A. 
and Joseph J. Flanagan. It contains over a hundred rooms, and ever}' 
item of equipment is high class. The cost of the house, including site, 
was over a hundred thousand dollars. 

Banking 

The data subjoined in regard to Malone's banks are taken largely from 
a paper prepared by Matt C. Ransom, and read by him at a meeting 
of the Franklin County Historical Society held June 12, 1903 : 

Prior to 1846 Malone had had only such banking facilities as were 
afforded by Mr. Wead's representation here of the Ogdensburg Bank 
and the Clinton County Bank at Plattsburgh, and by an individual 
institution called the Farmers' Bank, organized in 1842, but not now 
remembered by anybody, and which perhaps never did any actual busi- 
ness. The accommodations thus provided, though better than none, 
could have afforded only slight convenience and benefits. The Farmers' 
Bank continued to have a nominal existence until 1850. In 1846 
Samuel C. Wead, in partnership with four gentlemen of New York 
city who probably supplied most of the capital, organized the Franklin 
County Bank as a private or individual bank, which did business in 
the store of Meigs & Wead, with Mr. Wead as manager. It early issued 
bank bills or circulating notes to the amount of $15,000, increased later 
to $79,370, but what its deposits were, or if it had any at all, is unknown, 
though, if any, they must have been insignificant in amount. This 
bank ceased to do business and went into liquidation in 1851, when 
the Bank of Malone, capitalized at $100,000 and afterward increased 



Malone 459 

to $150,000, was incorporated by Mr. Wead, John and Hiram Horton, 
Edwin L. Meigs, William King and William Andrus of Malone, Henry 
B. Smith of Chateaugay, Leonard Fish of Bangor, and a number of 
individuals residing in Vermont. Mr. Wead was the first president, 
and William A. Wheeler the first cashier. Business was begun Septem- 
I er 15, 1851, and while a bank building was in course of erection was 
continued in the law office of Asa Hascall on or near the site of the 
present Episcopal Church. The bank building was a one-story stone 
structure located where the Wead Library now stands. The bank's first 
report of condition, as of November 20, 1851, showed deposits of only 
$5,220.81, and profits of $73.71 — which, however, were fictitious 
because the loss and expense account (carried in resources, but in fact 
a liability) was $431.94, so that the capital was actually impaired. 
Even four or five years later the deposits ranged only between about 
$20,000 and $75,000, and at the bank's final report in 1864, a few 
months before it closed its doors and transferred its business to the 
then newly organized National Bank of Malone, the deposits were only 
$158,088. Mr. Wead continued to be president of the bank through- 
out its existence, but Mr. Wheeler resigned as cashier in 1863, when 
Harry S. House succeeded him, and was in turn succeeded in 1865 by 
George Hawkins. 

The Farmers National Bank of Malone (the first national bank 
formed in the county) was chartered in December, 1864, with a capital 
of $100,000 (since increased to $150,000), and began business January 
14, 1865, in the store now occupied by Frederick I. Stockwell, and two 
months and a half later had deposits of $48,944.74. Edwin L. Meigs 
was the first president, and his successors have been Nathan Knapp, 
William Gr. Dickinson, Andrew W. Ferguson, Darius W. Lawrence 
from 1874 to 1913, and now Matt C. Bansom. The cashiers have 
been H. S. House, D. W. Lawrence, B. S. W. Clark, William F. 
Creed, O. S. Lawrence and Fred F. Fisk. Besides the Stockwell store 
its places of business have been in the Empire Block, the railway 
passenger station temporarily after the Empire Block fire, the Howard 
Block, and since 1915 in its own model banking house at the corner of 
'fain and Pearl streets, which was erected expressly for it at a' cost of 
about $60,000. 

The National Bank of Malone, organized as the successor of the 
State Bank of Malone, was chartered March 21, 1865, with a capital of 
$150,000 (afterward increased to $200,000), and began business soon 
afterward on the corner of Mill and Main streets, in the same building 



460 History of Franklin County 

where Mr. Wead had operated the Franklin County Bank. Mr. Wead 
became president of the new institution, and so continued until his 
death in 1876, when Sidney Lawrence of Moira succeeded him until 
the bank went into liquidation upon the expiration of its charter. 
George Hawkins was cashier from 1865 to 1883, when he resigned on 
account of ill health, and John C. Pease of Eutland, Vt., was chosen 
in his place. The first report of the bank, of date only two or three 
weeks after it began business, showed total resources of $416,613.27, 
deposits of $168,108.87, and surplus and undivided profits of $14,674.59. 

It having been deemed more expedient to organize a new bank than 
to procure a renewal of the charter of the National Bank of Malone. 
The Peoples National Bank of Malone was incorporated early in 1885, 
with a capital of $150,000, and began business March 1st of that year 
with Howard E. King as president, and Frederick D. Kilburn as vice- 
president in practical charge of the management. The latter resigned 
in 1896 to accept the office of State superintendent of banks, and was 
succeeded by N. Monroe Marshall, who became president in 1899, and 
still holds that relation. Hiram T. French was cashier until his death 
in 1900, and the position has since been filled by M. F. McGarrahan. 

Mr. Pease, having resigned the cashiership of the old National Bank 
of Malone, in 1885, engaged with others in organizing The Third 
National Bank of Malone with a capital of $50,000 — a disastrous ven- 
ture. It never had deposits in excess of about $60,000, and in 1890 
it was closed by order of the comptroller of the currency because of 
unsoundness and unsafety. The depositors were paid in full, but the 
losses of the stockholders were total. Oliver Howard was the first presi- 
dent, and S. A. Beman the second and last. There has never been any 
other bank failure in Franklin county except that of a New York city con- 
cern which had offices at Tupper Lake and Fort Covington in 1905 
with losses to the depositors in the places named. 

A comparison of the first reports respectively of the Farmers National 
Bank and of the Peoples National Bank each with its own like state- 
ment as of September 11, 1917, shows striking growth, representative 
not only of successful management and prosperity of the institutions 
themselves, but measuring also the richer and improved condition of 

the community: 

1 T "1* Farmers' National Bank 

April, 1865 Sept., 1917 

Deposits • • $48, 944 74 $767, 515 51 

Profits 3,480 67 226,01139 

Total resources 208, 557 14 1, 196, 526 90 



Malone 461 

People's National Bank. 

March, 1885 Sept., 1917 

Deposits $234,690 24 $868,872 64 

Profits •• 1,836 19 373,373 81 

Total resources 320, 001 44 1, 448, 375 48 

It is thus seen that in sixty-four years there has been a gain of more 
than two and a half million dollars in the so-called " banking power " 
of Malone, while if the comparison be made for the entire county the 
increase has been over five and a half millions. 



Newspapers 

Malone's first newspaper, and also the first in the county, called the 
Franklin Telegraph, was established in 1820 by Francis Burnap, and 
continued to be published for nearly ten years. It was Whig in politics 
during most of the time of its existence, though it supported the anti- 
Masonic party at the height of that craze. It was succeeded in 1830 by 
the Northern Spectator, which was founded by John G. Clayton, who 
came to Malone expressly to give the county a Whig organ. He repre- 
sented the New York Commercial Advertiser in starting the paper, 
which he sold after two years to George F. Allen. 

Publication of the Spectator was discontinued for a few weeks in 
1835, but was revived in March of that year as the Frontier Palladium 
under the proprietorship of Frederick P. Allen, a brother of George F. 
Under that title and as the Malone Palladium it was continued until 
1909. Francis T. Heath succeeded Mr. Allen as proprietor in 1845, 
and Joel J. Seaver became Mr. Heath's partner in 1850. In 1854 
Mr. Heath sold his interest to John K. Seaver, but returned to 
nominal ownership and editorship for a time a few years later. The 
firm of J. J. & J. K. Seaver continued until 1877, when the office and 
business was leased to Oscar P. Ames and Frederick J. Seaver, who 
subsequently purchased the paper and plant. Upon the death of Mr. 
Ames in 1899, his son, Clinton L., succeeded to his interest, and upon 
the death of the latter in 1904 Mr. Seaver acquired sole ownership, 
and continued as editor until publication of the paper was discontinued. 
Mr. Seaver was in the State service during this period, and as he could 
not give the business adequate attention closed it. The Palladium was 
aggressively Whig in politics until 1854, when it championed the 
Knownothing movement for three or four years. From 1858 to 1909 
it was steadfastly Eepublican. 

If in the long ago the policy of making a country newspaper dis* 



462 History of Franklin County 

tinctively the purveyor of local news had prevailed, as is now so largely 
the custom, the preparation of historical matter would be a vastly easier 
and more accurate work. But the Franklin Telegraph,, the Spectator 
and the Palladium, as well as the older of the other papers to which 
reference remains to be made, rarely contained items of home news 
until about 1870, and the exceptions were generally meagre and 
unsatisfactory. 

The Franklin Gazette was founded at Fort Covington in 1837, but 
ten years later the office of publication was transferred to Malone, where 
the paper was continued under various ownerships until 1911, when it 
was discontinued. The Gazette was leased about 1870 for six years to 
A. 1ST. Merchant — Mr. Flanders remaining its editor. It was then sold 
to John Law. The Gazette was always strongly, even bitterly, Demo- 
cratic in politics, and during the civil war was so outspoken in support 
of the so-called State-rights construction that Mr. Flanders was 
arrested on summary warrant issued by the President or Secretary of 
War, and taken to Fort Lafayette at New York and then to Fort 
Warren at Boston, where he was confined for about four months. Joseph 
E. Flanders, a brother, though never announced as one of the owners 
of the paper, is known to have shared in editing it at times. He also 
was arrested at the same time with Francis D., and was subjected to 
the same imprisonment. No specific charge was ever preferred against 
either, nor was any hearing given them. The procedure appears to 
have been simply an exercise of the war powers of the President, and 
to have had for its purpose a suppression of utterances which were 
believed to be calculated to discourage enlistments and to be prejudicial 
generally to the cause of the Union. Publication and editorship of the 
paper was continued by Mrs. Flanders during Mr. Flanders's imprison- 
ment, and its tone was at least no less extreme than it had been. The 
writer of this sketch was authoritatively informed many years ago that 
a communication from Mrs. Flanders to Jefferson Davis during the 
civil war was intercepted by federal officials, but is not sure whether 
that occurrence was a factor in causing the arrests referred to. At the 
time of the imprisonment of the Flanders brothers the forts in which 
they were confined were crowded with inmates who had been arrested 
for similar cause, and most of whom were from border points, like 
Baltimore and Louisville. No appeal to the courts was permitted to 
any of them. On his way to Malone the United States marshal who 
made the arrests stated to a gentleman at Syracuse that his instructions 
were to brook no interference, and that if any attorney or judge should 



Malone 463 

undertake proceedings to halt or hinder him he was to apprehend such 
person also. As further indication of Mr. Flanders's extreme views 
and outspoken utterance of them, the fact is recalled that when the 
Papineau rebellion was gathering head in Canada in 1837 the Gazette, 
expressing approval of it, was denied postal privileges in the Dominion. 
A similar proscription against circulation of the paper in the mails of 
the United States was enforced for a period of sixteen months during 
the years 1862 and 1863. 

The Jejfersonian was -published at Malone during the years 1853 
and 1854, and was an outgrowth of the Democratic factional strife 
of that period. Joseph R. Flanders was its editor and one of the pro- 
prietors, William B. Earle and Carlos C. Keeler having been joint 
owners with him, but with no part in editing the paper, which was 
uncompromisingly and radically " hard-shell," and which showed uncom- 
mon vigor and ability. Upon the removal of Mr. Flanders to New York 
city to engage in the practice of law, the publication was discontinued. 

Alfred Lincoln and Samuel Thorndike, bright young men, and law 
students or perhaps admitted practitioners, published a small paper for 
a short time before the civil war. It was of folio form, each page about 
eight by twelve inches in size, and had different titles at different times. 
One issue before me, dated July 6, 1857, was called The Chafer, and 
another, dated January 17, 1860, the Truth Teller. It was printed 
surreptitiously in the Gazette office by Gazette employees at night, 
though the type was set in its own office, which was on the second floor 
of the building now known as Houston Block, at the west end of the 
Main street bridge. The sheet contained personal items and gossip 
mostly, and in tone was snappy, if not scurrilous. Nathaniel Fisk, 
father-in-law of the senior editor and proprietor, threw the type out of 
the office window into the river one day, and that ended the enterprise. 

The Malone Farmer was founded by George IT. Stevens in 1886 
with avowal that its mission would be especially to represent the farm- 
ing element, to fight unnecessary and excessive expenditure of public 
moneys, and in particular to reduce the charges for county printing. 
Julius Q. Clark was its publisher for a time, and it next went into the 
control of Andrew E. Clark, a son-in-law of Judge Henry A. Paddock. 
The appearance of the paper in its early years was cheap and dirty, and 
its contents corresponded. It is now owned and conducted by Halbert 
D. Stevens, Frederick L. Turner and Leon L. Turner, and has become 
one of the high-class weeklies of the State, with a large circulation. The 
remark may perhaps be permissible that it does not dwell now much 
upon the cost of public printing. It is Republican in politics. 



464 Histoby of Feanklin County 

About 1890 William F. Mannix started a newspaper which he called 
The. Independent, and the Farmer having ceased to be as fully as desired 
the especial representative of the interests which were originally back 
of it, a corporation was formed to acquire and conduct Th e Independent 
as the official organ of the Patrons of Industry. The grouping of the 
directorate was a curious one to those who understood then local con- 
ditions, the names having been Lyndon K. Young, George W. Briggs, 
M. A. Martin, H. A. Taylor and Gordon H. Main, with George H. 
Stevens as manager. The name was changed- to The Farmers' Advo- 
cate, and up to the time that the corporation ceased to be the owner its 
publication cost Mr. Stevens about $1,200. E. N". W. Bobbins bought 
the concern in 1896, and continued publication of the paper for about 
five years, with an annual loss of $800 to $1,000. The paper was 
discontinued in the latter part of 1900. 

A Mr. Murphy brought The Forum here from Massena in 1902, and 
published it for a few years at about the period when Bryanism and 
Hearstism was permeating the State Democracy, and when municipaliza- 
tion of the water-works system was a local issue. The latter proposition 
was to cut theretofore prevailing rates squarely in two, and give a rich 
return to the village. The paper had little character or standing, but 
was a rank champion of pretty much everything that savored of radical- 
ism or socialism. It was removed to Kansas after a few years. 

The Malone Evening Telegram was started as a daily in 1905 by 
Charles M. Bedfield, then a stranger in the county, and has continued 
ever since under his ownership and editorship. It has had a remark- 
able prosperity, and has a circulation of five thousand copies. Other 
dailies in places corresponding to Malone in population have almost 
always had a languishing existence during their early years, but the 
Telegram secured a large number of subscribers at once, and has always 
commanded a goodly line of advertising. It is newsy, and while nom- 
inally Republican in politics the counting office control sees to it that 
it is never offensively or aggressively partisan, nor very assertive on 
any controverted question of any sort. 

Frederick L. Long came from New York in 1912, and began the pub- 
lication of a Democratic daih r , but the enterprise lived only a few 
months. 

Malone's More Serious Fires 

Malone has suffered seriously from fires, and a list of the more notable 
of its losses by this cause is appended for reference purposes : 

The first academy building was partly burned in 1835, and small as 



Malone 465 

the loss was in dollars it was yet as grievous in proportion to the popu- 
lation and wealth of the community as was that by the destruction of 
the school building, almost on the same site, in 1880. The structure 
burned in 1835 was replaced with one of stone, which latter was razed 
in 1868. 

The second Amsden hotel, at the junction of Main street and Har- 
ison place, and known as the Franklin House, was burned about 1843 
or 1814. 

The cotton mill built by Jonathan Stearns about 1829, and subse- 
quently owned by Hugh Magill and William Greene, was burned March 
13, 1846. The building was occupied also as a dry goods and general 
store by Magill & Greene, and most of the store stock was saved. The 
loss was $50,000. 

A fire memorable because of attendant weather conditions rather 
than by reason of the amount of loss destroyed William King's resi- 
dence on the corner of Main and Pearl streets March 27, 1847. The 
greatest snow storm ever known in Malone had continued throughout 
the day, and light, fluffy snow lay four feet deep on the level, so that 
the engine could not be brought to the ground, nor water hauled from 
the river. 

The tannery on the east side of the river, owned by W. H. Webster, 
was wholly destroyed August 23, 1865, together with 800 cords of bark, 
and the fire, spreading northwardly, consumed also P. Clark's livery 
barn on Mill street, and on Main street the two stores then owned by 
Rufus Pi. Stephens and C. W. Allen and George W. Fisher. The 
Stephens store was occupied by James N. Palmer with ready-made 
clothing. The Main street buildings contained also Odd Fellows' Hall, 
the village school district library, D. N. Huntington's insurance office, 
C. B. Conant's tailor shop, a billiard room, and the store of Allen & 
Fisher. The loss was $16,000 exclusive of the tannery and bark, which 
were valued at $15,000. 

The old Hosford Hotel, a frame building erected earlier than 1807, 
adjacent to the present Rutland Railroad, caught fire January 20, 1866, 
when the temperature was ten degrees below zero. The structure stood 
about twenty feet north of the brick Franklin House, erected in 1851, 
and was connected with the latter by a wing. The old hotel contained 
Wantastiquet Hall, a famous dance room in its day, and rooms in it 
were used as an annex to the Franklin House. Both structures were 
completely destroyed. They were owned by A. W. Ferguson, Nathan 
Knapp and B. S. W. Clark, and had as tenants J. T. White (book 



466 History of Franklin County 

store), Amander Heath (grocery), S. B. Carpenter and Samuel Greeno 
(meat markets), Sanford and Mackenzie Lewis (saloon), Mrs. Darrah 
and Miss Darling (millinery shops), and James L. Hogle, landlord, 
whose loss was $5,000. The loss on buildings was $10,000, while the 
individual losses of tenants was slight. Mr. Hogle undertook to buy the 
lot on the corner of Main and Webster streets, where the Baptist church 
now is, with the purpose of building a hotel there. But the proposition 
fell through, and, instead, he built at the corner of Main and Academy 
streets, now the Smith House. 

St. Joseph's Catholic church, then recently built and not wholly 
finished, was discovered to be on fire soon after the close of morning 
service September 4, 1870, and was entirely destroyed. The insurance 
was only $13,000, which was hardly more than the debt upon the 
property. 

The tanner}' of Webster Bros, was discovered by the watchman to 
be on fire October 20, 1879, and, instead of giving the alarm promptly, 
the man ran nearly a quarter of a mile to notify the foreman privately. 
By the time that the alarm was sounded the entire structure was 
wrapped in flames, and, with but a scant water supply, nothing could 
be done to save the establishment, nor much to protect adjacent prop- 
erty. The heat was so fierce that the Lincoln & Miller tannery on the 
west side of the river was soon burning, and was destroyed. Two 
wooden buildings on Main street overhanging the river, and Owned by 
G-. W. Fisher and M. E. Lynch, the stone stores known as Field's 
Exchange or Horton Block, and owned by Myron B. Horton, and also 
the two stores next east, owned by Mrs. W. W. King and Edward 
Cherrier, the stone marble shop on Mill street south of the tannery, 
and P. Clark's Block and Joseph Cogland's saloon, also on Mill street, 
were all burned. The principal tenants were John H. Moore (fruits 
and confectionery), N. Morse (books and boots and shoes), D. F. Man- 
nix (clothing), and the Odd Fellows. Webster Bros, reckoned their loss 
at $50,000 while the other losses were estimated to aggregate 
$45,000. It was the biggest fire that had ever visited Malone up to 
that time. 

On Christmas eve, 1880, the three-story brick academy and high 
school building, erected in 1867 and 1868, and containing eight class 
rooms and a large assembly hall, was utterly destroyed. There was 
little water for fighting the flames, and the stream delivered from the 
hydrant until the steam fire engine was got at work was miserably weak. 
Nor was the steamer effective, because the supply of water was insuffi- 
cient to feed it. The cost of replacing the building was $42,000. 



Malone 467 

January 28, 1888, a fire originating in the crockery store of M. C. 
Tullar, situate in that part of the Ferguson House structure that was 
called Empire Block, extended quickly to Lawrence Hall and thence 
to the hotel proper. The weather was intensely cold, there was little 
water in the reservoir, with a feeble hydrant pressure, and owing to 
heavy ice in the river the steam engine was slow to start, so that the 
flames gained a big headw r ay, dooming the entire structure. An 
explosion blew the front wall of the hotel outward, and Isaac Chesley, 
an estimable and popular merchant, was buried in the debris and killed. 
The building was owned by Oliver Howard, and the principal tenants 
were John M. Spann (hardware), M. 'C. Tullar (crockery), Abner 
Croff (furniture), Kempton & Barnum (dry goods and groceries), 
Thomas Carpenter (ready-made clothing), Wm. P. Cantwell (law 
offices), Frank P. Penfield (undertaker), Sanford & Bartlett (milli- 
nery), the Farmers National Bank, and Frank Tallman, lessee of the 
hotel. The fire was the most destructive that Malone ever suffered, the 
aggregate of losses having been estimated at $150,000. As a result of 
the calamity, however, the long agitated enlargement of the village 
w T ater works was brought about. 

January 18, 1892, a fire originating in the Houston building (adjacent 
to the river, on the south side of Main street) destroyed all that part of 
the structure that stood above the street level, and also E, D. Eice's 
shoe store and the building next west, which was occupied by Davis 
Bros, as a drug store. The Houston building was so cut up by parti- 
tions that the flames found many hidden places in which to work, and 
approach by the firemen not being possible except from the front, the fire 
was a difficult one to fight, even with an abundance of water driven by 
a good head. The tenants were N. J. Lyon (meats), Ernest Muller 
(jew r elry), Davis Bros, (drugs), Miss Kate Hart (groceries), and Pond 
Bros, (cigars). The losses totaled about $16,000. 

June 6, 1893, the tannery of Webster Bros, burned for the sixth and 
final time, but since its destruction in 1879 the water supply had been 
increased, so that, though the building was larger than ever before, hard 
work prevented the flames from extending to other property. Nine 
powerful streams were poured upon the tannery. It had not been 
operated for some time, and contained little stock. An offer of $15,000 
for it had been made a short time previously, and refused because 
ridiculously inadequate. 

A fire originating in the insurance office of Hutchins & Wilson 
December 3, 1895, was one of the most stubborn and persistent, ever 



468 History of Franklin County 

known in the town, and although enough water was poured into the 
building to float it into the street if it had not been anchored its upper 
floors were gutted, and also those of the building next on the west, with 
considerable damage to two others adjoining. The buildings were owned 
by Mrs. J. E. Flanders, S. A. Beman and George C. Williamson, Mrs. 
E. Cherrier and Thomas Adams, whose losses were figured at $11,000. 
The tenants who suffered were R. McC. Miller (drugs), George C. Wil- 
liamson (general merchant), E. N. W. Robbins (printing office), F. G. 
Shufelt (boots and shoes), and Hutchins & Wilson, S. A. Beman and 
M. T. Scanlon (offices), with combined losses of about $14,000. 

May 26, 1896, the hardware store of H. D. & R, C. Thompson and 
the building adjoining, owned by the Wells Knapp estate and occupied 
by J. J. Murphy with dry goods and groceries, were burned. The 
losses were estimated at $50,000. The origin of the fire was unknown, 
though it was suggested at the time that it might have been caused by 
lightning. 

The Olympia Hotel, which had formerly been the Elmwood House, 
on the corner of Main and Pearl streets, was burned February 11, 
1899 — the fire starting when the proprietor and most of the help were 
absent, serving a banquet at the armory. The mercury stood at fifteen 
degrees below zero, which, with the inflammable character of the build- 
mg, made it impossible for the firemen to do effective work except in 
protecting adjacent property. The losses sustained by the help were 
heavy, and that of the proprietor, Henry A. Gray, was estimated by 
him at from $15,000 to $18,000. The house had been opened under 
the new management only about six months before, and contained a lot 
of new furnishings. 

The Malone Paper Company's mill was burned May 26, 1903, with a 
loss of about $100,000. At that date the village water mains did not 
reach to the locality, and the nearest hydrant was half a mile distant. 
Besides, the steam fire engine was out of town, fighting forest fires, and 
no effectual effort to save the property was possible. 

In the afternoon of April 2, 1911, fire broke out in the basement of 
the main building of the Northern New York Institution for Deaf -Mutes, 
a three-story and basement brick structure which had cost about $60,000, 
and just as it was thought that the fire had been extinguished by the use 
of the school hose it was discovered to have crept between partitions to 
the second floor, where the flames were bursting through the windows. 
The beginning of the fire was in the northeastern corner of the building, 
a strong wind was blowing from the west, and fire walls divided the strue- 



Malone 469 

ture into three parts — eastern and western wings and a central section, 
so that complete destruction seemed almost impossible. Nevertheless, 
and though, as one observer remarked, no building ever fought harder to 
save itself, the flames worked along corridors and through doorways and 
burned everything except a hospital annex. A considerable part of the 
contents wa*> saved. The new buildings which replaced the one that was 
burned cost about $130,000. 

The worst fire horror that Malone ever had occurred April 17, 1913, 
when a building on the corner of Catherine and Mechanics street, in use 
as a hotel, but without equipment of fire escapes, was destroyed. The 
place was known as Hotel Wilson, with William and Mary Wilson under- 
stood to be its proprietors, though a relative named W. M. Bailey was 
nominally in control. The building was a mere shell, erected originally 
as a carriage repository, and in half an hour after the alarm had been 
given it collapsed. There were thirty-five boarders and guests in the 
house, and the family and help brought the number of inmates up to 
forty-two. So rapid and fierce was the progress of the flames that cur- 
tains of fire or clouds of smoke filled the hallways before the occupants 
could get from their rooms even in an undressed state, and many of 
those who succeeded in escaping had to leap from the windows. A 
number suffered thus broken legs or arms or were otherwise seriously 
hurt, while others were severely burned. After the fire had been extin- 
guished and the debris partly cleared away, the bodies of six persons 
were recovered from the ruins — some partially consumed and others 
so charred as to be identifiable only with difficulty. In addition, Fred 
Tummons was so badly burned that he survived only a few hours. The 
dead were : Albert Robideau and John Tummons of Malone ; Philip 
O'Connor of Saranac Inn — formerly of Constable ; John Maas of 
Albany; Michael W. Cooney of Westville; and Tony Nicolina of New 
York. Nicolina was a harpist, and after having once escaped re-entered 
the building against warnings of the clanger, in the hope of saving his 
harp. He was never again seen alive. William and Mary Wilson were 
indicted and tried for manslaughter, but the jury returned a verdict of 
not guilty. 

Murders and Other Homicides 

For nearly three-quarters of a century following its first settlement, 
there was no proven murder in the town, nor even a death that was 
strongly suspected of having been by murder. The record thereafter 
for a number of years runs almost as strikingly the other way, and gave 
Malone for a time a reputation that shamed and hurt. So many killings 



470 History of Franklin County 

occurred within a few years without a single one of them expiated that 
it came to be said that life to a visitor with money was unsafe here if 
venture were made into evil walks, or association had with a certain 
class of characters, who seemed to be able to rob and murder almost at 
will, and to defy detection. Happily the past dozen years or more show 
a cleaner page, and in particular since the legalized sale of liquor ceased 
on the first day of October the town has been as quiet and, superficially 
at least, as orderly as could be wished. 

Early in the morning of May 24, 1867, the body of George H. Sea- 
bury of Chateaugay — who had been a student at Franklin Academy 
and at the time was home temporarily from Amherst College — was 
found on Main street, in front of the Hugaboom block, the site of which 
then was occupied by the original King store building, and in the base- 
ment of which there was a saloon. There were contusions on his face and 
forehead, and a pistol ball had pierced his heart. Letters and a purse in 
his pockets were undisturbed. Physicians testified at the inquest that 
death must have occurred almost or quite instantly. The contents of Mr. 
Seabury's trousers pockets, almost falling out, suggested that he had been 
carried up the saloon stairs feet foremost, and the belief was prevalent 
that he had been shot in the saloon, though no evidence of a trustworthy 
character was procurable to that effect, or determinative of who were 
the murderers. One dissolute character, indeed, did say when intoxi- 
cated that he was looking into the rear windows of the saloon 'and saw 
the fatal shot fired, but when he became sober denied having any knowl- 
edge whatever of the affair. Mr. Seabury was not in the habit of fre- 
quenting saloons, and the generally accepted theory concerning the 
crime was that he had been an agent in the employ of the Canadian 
or British government to ascertain and report upon Fenian plans and 
movements, and that he was killed by Fenians. ISTo arrests for the 
murder were ever made. 

George Barr of North Lawrence attended the Franklin county fair in 
1870, and spent a part of the time while in Malone at the poker table. 
He was known to have had at least $500 in money on his person when, 
on the evening of September 28th, he left the hotel to take a train for 
home. Two days later his body was discovered in the river just below 
the Main street bridge. He had received a blow on the head, had been 
garroted, and his pockets rifled. The conjecture at the time was that 
he had been persuaded after leaving the hotel to abandon the purpose of 
returning to his home that night, and at a later hour had been mur- 
dered and robbed, and his body thrown over the bridge. The iden- 



Malone 471 

tity of his murderers was never known, nor did suspicion even point to 
any one very definitely as probably the guilty party. 

It came to be whispered on the street at New Year's, 1881, and almost 
shouted from the housetops a few days later, that Emma Davis had 
poisoned Gertrude, the daughter of Samuel Manning, and niece of 
Warren L., with the latter of whom she had made her home in Malone 
for a number of years. "Warren L. Manning had formerly been a mer- 
chant in Fort Covington, whose years numbered more than fourscore, 
who was understood to be wealthy, and who had no family other than 
the brother and niece with the exception of Mrs. Thomas Davidson, an 
adopted daughter. Miss Gertrude was twenty-four or twenty- five years 
of age, and Miss Davis thirty-two years old, a member of the Methodist 
church in good standing, had formerly lived in Brandon, but for ten 
years preceding had been Mr. Manning's housekeeper, with a status that 
made her almost as one of the family. Two or three weeks later Miss 
Manning herself made complaint before a magistrate against Miss Davis, 
who was arrested and held for the action of the grand jury. She was 
indicted in March for administering poison with intent to kill, and was 
tried in the following September — District Attorney Badger appearing 
for the people and Hon. John I. Gilbert for the accused. The undis- 
puted facts in the case were that Miss Manning returned from church 
one Sunday noon early in November, 1880, in apparently good health, 
and soon after dinner the same day became violently ill, vomiting and 
purging. There was improvement in her condition after a few days, but 
similar attacks recurred at intervals during the ensuing six weeks, with 
apparent partial paralysis and lack of sensation developing. At about 
the time of the second attack a physician was called, and was in attend- 
ance frequently thereafter, with a number of other practitioners appear- 
ing as counsel. At the trial Miss Manning, brought into court on a 
couch, testified to quarrels having occurred between herself and Miss 
Davis, that substantially every instance of a recurrence of her trouble 
followed soon after Miss Davis had administered food or medicine, and 
that upon one occasion she had found a greenish sediment in a cup of 
• rust coffee made for her by Miss Davis, and also once in a cup of milk. 
A number of physicians testified to their belief that the case was one 
of arsenical poisoning, while others of equal standing scouted that view, 
and insisted that Miss Manning's condition was due to calomel, or was 
a manifestation of hysteria, which it was urged might simulate any 
ailment. Assuming the guilt of the accused, the motive attributed to 
Miss Davis was hope that with Miss Manning dead she might marry 



472 History of Franklin County 

Mr. Manning, or at least enjoy a benefit under his will. The jury not 
only returned a verdict of not guilty, but were at pains to file a state- 
ment with the court declaring that they had no doubt of the entire 
innocence of the accused. The presiding judge announced from the 
bench that he concurred entirely in the jury's view. While the case 
was neither a murder nor an attempt to kill as thus decided, the charge 
and the trial occasioned so much interest, and the community was so 
divided in opinion as to the guilt or innocence of Miss Davis, that it 
seems to demand a place in this recital. Miss Manning recovered her 
health, was married, and moved to a suburb of New York city. Miss 
Davis went to New England, and five or six years later a report was 
published that she had attempted to poison a wealthy man of Hart- 
ford, Conn., for whom she was housekeeper; and there were innuendoes 
that suspicious deaths had occurred in other families where she had 
worked in that section. 

A child's ball bounded into a culvert on Eennie street June 4, 1887, 
and the child pursued it. Ten or a dozen feet from the culvert's mouth 
the child stumbled upon the body of a man, and naturally gave a 
panic alarm. Investigation by elders determined that the body was 
that of Eugene Van Ornam of Saginaw, Mich., who had been at work 
as a lumberman at Buck Mountain or Brandon, in the town of Santa 
Clara. It was learned further that Van Ornam had come to Malone on 
his way home four days before, and had been accompanied to a hotel by 
George King, a village tough, who had worked with Van Ornam for a 
time at Buck Mountain, but who was then employed here as a farm 
hand. King stated at the hotel that Van Ornam " had lots of money ; " 
but while King was absent momentarily from the office, and unknown 
to him, Van Ornam deposited $142 with the proprietor for safekeeping. 
In the evening the two men visited a house of ill repute, but returned 
to the hotel at an early hour. A little later King was heard to pro- 
pose going out again, but Van Ornam declined, though afterward con- 
senting to go for half an hour, and the two left the hotel together, and 
were afterward seen on Eennie street. Van Ornam never returned to 
the hotel, and except for the chance loss of the child's ball his body 
might not have been discovered for weeks. The amount of money that 
he had when he left Buck Mountain was ascertained with certainty, 
and it was thus calculated that he must have kept in his possession 
forty-odd dollars after making the deposit at the hotel; but when the 
body was recovered there was no purse, watch, not even a penny in 
money, nor any identifying article whatever on it. King returned to 



Malone 473 

his place of employment the next morning, pleaded indisposition as an 
excuse for not taking up his work, and then sneaked away. An 
acquaintance who met him remarked that he " looked scared." At the 
inquest one witness testified that in the early evening, and in the immedi- 
ate presence of Van Ornam, who was deaf, King made a proposition to 
rob him. Photographs of King were sent out by hundreds, a reward of 
a thousand dollars was offered for his apprehension, and an expert 
detective was put on the case, but nothing was ever heard of him from 
the hour of his departure. Two or three men were arrested by reason 
of suspicion of participation in the crime, or at least of guilty knowl- 
edge concerning it, but no certain evidence could be procured to justify 
proceeding further against them. 

James McGee of White's Station in Canada, aged about fifty years, 
was found in a dying condition near the railroad machine shops June 
30, 1894. One arm had been severed near the elbow by a car or 
locomotive, and there was a severe injury on the head, apparently 
caused by a blow. He recovered consciousness, and told that the night 
before he had started with two well known characters of the town to 
visit a disorderly house in the vicinity of the place where he was found, 
but determined to give up the plan, and turned back, when he was 
struck. Apparently he had been robbed, and left upon the railroad 
track so that he might be run over by a train, and thus his death made 
to appear accidental. He died the following night. Two of our village 
toughs were arrested upon this statement, and the coroner's jury 
charged them with murder; but the grand jury was of opinion that the 
available evidence did not justify the finding of an indictment. 

The body of Adelor Fish, a young man, was found in the Horton 
mill pond June 21, 1902. His head had been crushed, and physicians 
testified that death had preceded the entrance of the body into the 
water. Fish had lived in the village, and four or five days before the 
body was found had started from his father's home with declaration of 
intention to go to a lumber camp in the southern part of the county 
for work. He was known to have $17 in money at the time, but when 
found none of it was on his person. It was proven that he had spent 
the day about town, drinking, and a hard character who was seen with 
him has always been believed to be the murderer. The same night that 
he was last seen alive this man assaulted and robbed another man on 
Amsden street, for which offense he was convicted and sent to prison 
for a term of seven years. 

Barney Campbell, who had been giving song and dance exhibitions 



474 History of Franklin County 

in the saloons of Malone and vicinity, was shot and killed August 11, 
1902, in the saloon and shooting gallery on Catherine street — the same 
building which became the Hotel Wilson — that was known as Zeb 
Coon's. Campbell was a rod or more to one side of the target, and, 
observing to a companion that the shooting was wild and reckless, was 
about to withdraw when a bullet pierced his heart. First excited 
reports of the affair represented that there had been a quarrel between 
the man who fired the shot and Campbell, but later testimony was to 
the effect that the gun was in the hands of one of the proprietors or 
of one of the help when it was discharged, or was in the act of passing 
from one hand to another's. There came to be acceptance of the theory 
that the affair was wholly accidental, but the proprietor was neverthe- 
less arrested upon a charge of criminal carelessness. He was not 
convicted. 

On March 13, 1909, Charles Devlin, Jr., was invited by Henry Brooks 
to accompany him on a drive from Bangor to Malone. Accepting the 
invitation, Devlin stopped at his home for a moment, and procured a 
hatchet, which he concealed under his coat. When the distance to 
Malone had been half traversed Devlin suddenly assaulted Brooks, and, 
abandoning the rig, the men had a fierce struggle in the road. Brooks's 
head was horribly cut and bruised, and the skull cleft with the blade 
of the hatchet. Devlin came on to Malone, proceeded at once to the 
jail, and demanded to be locked up — adding that he had killed a man. 
He seemed altogether self-possessed and calm, and later talked about a 
conspiracy against him and of a secret concerning him which Brooks 
knew and which he feared that Brooks intended to reveal. Devlin was 
undoubtedly insane, was so found by a sheriff's jury, and was com- 
mitted to Matteawan, where he still is. Both men resided in Bangor, 
were day laborers — Devlin twenty-five years old, and Brooks twenty- 
one — and they had been particularly good friends. Neither was mar- 
ried, and Devlin was of intemperate habits. 

Churches and Other Organizations 

So far as known, the first religious service in Malone preceded any 
church organization by about three years, and between the date of such 
first service and the forming of a religious society there was occasional 
preaching by one or another New England missionary in a barn owned 
by Captain John Wood on Park street — afterward the S. C. Wead 
and now the H. A. Putnam place. 

Then, in the spring of 1807, Eev. Amos Pettingill of Champlain and 



Malone 475 

Rev. Ebenezer Hibbard of Brandon, Vt., visited Malone, and effected 
the organization of the First Congregational Church and Society at 
the house of Abijah Abbott (which was the "tavern house" so called, 
that stood on a part of the site of the present Howard House). The 
original members numbered twenty-seven, and for one year, though 
how often we do not know, Noah Moody's house, now the site of the 
court house, was their place of worship. The early ministers who 
served the charge were a Mr. Robinson for three months during the 
winter of 1808, then Rev. Holland Wicks for ten weeks, followed by 
Rev. Simeon Parmelee for three months. In 1809 Rev. Ashbel Parme- 
lee came from Vermont to Malone to marry Lucy Winchester, and 
from that visit a call resulted for him to become the pastor — a relation 
which continued unbroken for thirty-six years, and which, according 
to the testimony of men much older than the writer, had inexpressibly 
important fruitage. Writing in 1885, Dr. Bates referred to Mr. 
Parmelee as " a man whose impress still remains upon the town, and 
ever will continue;" Vice-President Wheeler that "his influence, ever 
running with the coming ages, will alone show its rich fruitage in 
eternity;" and Martin L. Parlin, differing with him radically in 
religious belief, that " no other man has done so much in laying the 
foundations of our prosperity, or has left so large and lastiug an 
impress upon our town." Again quoting Mr. Wheeler, " I often think 
of him, as St. Paul said of himself, ' as one born out of due time.' He 
belonged to the days of Cromwell, * * * born under the dark 
shadow of Calvinism, and his life and teachings were pervaded by its 
peculiar tenets. * * * His aggressive nature and intense convic- 
tions of duty impelled him to ferret out evil of every nature, and, once 
found, he gave it no quarter." It requires to be added that for years 
he dominated the thought of the community and practically dictated 
to it what might and what might not be done or attempted in the way 
of indulgence in amusements, in regard to the walk of individuals, and 
as to religions observance : and all this he accomplished because his 
forceful personality created a public opinion that frowned upon the 
things that he disapproved, and marie it a stigma upon any one to 
practice them. Mr. Parmelee's salary initially was four hundred dol- 
lars a year, payable one-third in money and two-thirds in grain : and 
never did his compensation exceed six hundred and fifty dollars 
annually, except that donations were given to him once a year. No 
parsonage was furnished. Nevertheless he supported on this miserably 
small stipend a family consisting of one son and seven daughters, and 



476 History of Franklin County 

kept open house for visiting clergy, agents for Bible and tract societies, 
music teachers, temperance and abolition lecturers, men in search of 
engagement as school teachers, and many others who imposed upon his 
hospitality. 

Mr. Parmelee was ordained and installed February 8, 1810, in the 
academy. His life thereafter for many years was of intense activity 
and prodigious labor. Besides serving his own church, he engaged in 
missionary work in adjoining counties, acted without pay as army 
chaplain and attended the soldier sick in the war of 1812, felled the 
trees with his own hand on the lot where he built his home, and him- 
self erected the structure. 

From 1813 to 1828 the court house was the society's usual place of 
worship, though the academy was doubtless occupied on the Sabbaths 
when the Baptists or the Methodists were in possession of the former 
quarters. In 1817 the church affiliated with the Champlain Presbytery, 
and in 1823 the first Sabbath school was organized. In a historical 
sermon in 1883 Bev. C. S. Bichardson, the then pastor, divided the life 
of the church into three periods, the first of which closed with 1825, 
and during which few matters of special importance occurred addi- 
tional to the birth of the organization, the engagement of Mr. Parmelee 
as pastor, the demoralization incident to the war, a great revival in 
1816, and the organization of the Sabbath school; or at least so runs 
the chronicle as it was written by one of the pastors — meaning, as I 
take it, that no other single incident or action stands out as of great 
moment. But the sum of the society's activities and influence in its 
earliest days must have been incalculable. Conditions of thought and 
society at that time, with the readiness of men and women to accept 
religious discipline, and the disposition of the organization to exercise 
it, made the church a factor in individual affairs as it never has been 
since, nor will ever be again. Thus I find in the Articles of Agreement 
in the record for 1822 that if any member walked erringly every brother 
having knowledge of the offense should, previous to consulting with 
any one, " go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone ; " that 
" we deem it improper for brother to go to law with brother ; " and 
that "we will restrain our children from attending balls or other 
amusements." Among the obligations imposed by The Covenant were 
engagement to hold family morning and evening prayer, to keep careful 
watch over each other, and to submit to the discipline of the church. 
Then follows the record of procedure under these provisions, which 
shows debts collected by the church after having heard the evidence, 



Malone 477 

and of disciplining of those who had violated rules of conduct. Com- 
plaints by one or another without really personal grievance, but as a 
matter of general concern, appear frequently in the record against 
offending brethren for breach of the Sabbath ; for failure to observe the 
family practice of prayer or for non-attendance upon the stated meet- 
ings of the church ; for misrepresentation or lack of care to speak the 
truth ; for engaging in fighting ; for intemperance and occasionally for 
actual intoxication; for taking wolves from the traps of others; for 
holding conversation and partially concluding a bargain for the rental 
of a house on the Sabbath ; for an inn keeper permitting a ball to be 
held at his tavern, and, in one case, for calling a brother " an infamous 
liar" — which characterization, by the way, the accused established as 
having been justified, while the accuser afterward apologized and 
besought forgiveness for his sin. The instances were infrequent where 
the charges were not held to be well founded, after which it was cus- 
tomary to serve a letter of admonition upon the offender, who, if con- 
tinuing contumacious, was then excommunicated. It is to be noted, 
however, that in only two or three cases did the accused fail to accept 
the church's finding, to express contrition, and to entreat forgiveness 
by the brethren and by God. 

Procedure to-day of the sort outlined could hardly prove salutary, 
and would perhaps make conditions worse by reason of resentment 
arising from a sense of unwarrantable intrusion upon private concerns, 
but in the time under consideration, when the dicta of a pastor and of 
the congregation carried dread and terror, it can not be doubted that 
the methods in question operated to make men generally more seemly 
and correct in conduct, and to establish better conditions outwardly at 
least in the community as a whole. 

As further disclosing the practices of this early time, it is interesting 
to note that the week-day prayer meetings were held commonly in the 
afternoon, and that where members who were in any way derelict with 
regard to the obligations imposed by the Articles of Agreement or by 
The Covenant requested letters of dismission because of contemplated 
union with a church of another denomination, such requests were 
denied. 

In 1825 it was determined to erect a church building. A lot for it 
on Webster street had been given as early as 1810 by Richard Harison, 
but all of the public buildings having been on the west side of the river 
it was thought to be but just that the church should be on the east side, 
and accordingly it was located at the corner of Clay and Main streets, 



478 History of Franklin County 

with the front so far to the north that it actually encroached upon the 
highway. The corner stone was laid May 30, 1826, and the edifice was 
dedicated February 7, 1828. It was of stone, had a spire of consider- 
able height, and cost $8,000. The pews were along either side of the 
auditorium, were square with high backs and uncushioned seats, which 
were on three sides ; and the pulpit, in the north end, was reached by a 
winding stairway of a dozen steps. The members numbered 136 at 
the date of dedication. 

The anti-Masonic furore threatened to disrupt the church in 1829. 
A considerable number of the most prominent and most highly respected 
members were Free Masons, but the majority were in bitter opposition 
to the order. Because of the belief and attitude of these latter, four- 
teen members of the church who were Masons, including the pastor, 
engaged in a formal written announcement to procure dismission from 
the lodge, upon the principle that " if meat make my brother to offend, 
I will eat no flesh." But they made no declaration impeaching the 
character of Masonry, nor confessed contrition because of former 
affiliation with it. This course appeared to satisfy most of the con- 
gregation, but a few were irreconcilable, and refused to attend the serv- 
ices unless and until the Masons should beg forgiveness and avow peni- 
tence. Failing to obtain compliance with that demand, these with- 
drew and united with the Baptist church, the leading ministerial rep- 
resentative of which in Northern New York was a pronounced anti- 
Mason of crusader type. 

In 1840 a revival added one hundred to the membership of the 
church, and in 1841 the custom of standing during prayer was changed 
to sitting or kneeling. 

The third period in the life of the organization is listed as having 
begun in 1851, when portions of the church building being in danger 
of tumbling down it was demolished, and the erection of a new house 
of worship commenced. During the period of building services were 
again held in the court house. The membership had increased to two 
hundred, and the new structure — of brick above a stone basement — 
cost $9,000, inclusive of an organ, and answered the needs of the 
society until 1883. Its auditorium being the largest in town, it was 
used not infrequently for lectures, for war meetings from 1861 to 
1865, for musical conventions, and for the academic graduating exer- 
cises. The final .service in it was held April 5, 1883, after it had been 
voted to erect the present imposing and majestic structure, during the 
building of which Lawrence Hall was occupied. The cost to the society 



Malonb 479 

of the present building and furnishings, inclusive of the organ, but not 
of the fine memorial windows, was $46,000, but to the contractor it was 
considerably more. There is no finer church edifice in Northern New 
York, and it was a source of particular satisfaction to the members 
that at the date of dedication it had been paid for. The members then 
numbered nearly four hundred, though many who were inactive or who 
had removed from town were included in the count. The actual, live 
membership in 1917 was 375. 

A chime of nine bells was hung in the church tower in 1886, a gift 
by Eli B. Smith. 

The First Baptist Church of Malone was founded December 12, 
1807, with twelve members, but not legally incorporated until Septem- 
ber 28, 1831, when Asaph Watkins, Asa Hascall and Nahum Whipple 
were elected as the first trustees. Unfortunately all of the records of 
the church for the first eighteen years of its existence have been lost, 
if any were kept, and also those for a number of years since 1825. 
Thus everything touching the period of the infancy of the church, with 
the single exception of its birth, is a blank. Not one name of those 
who must have been its preachers has been preserved, nor a line about 
its growth, or whether it had a sustained activity from the first or 
merely languished for a time. It is generally accepted, however, by 
those who have sought for the facts that Nathaniel Colver, whose life 
is sketched in the chapter on Fort Covington, and who was a man of 
tremendous force and remarkable eloquence, was the first formal pastor, 
serving from 1825 or 1826 to the spring of 1827, and serving also at 
the same time his own charge at Fort Covington. Mr. Colver was 
followed by a Mr. Smith for a short time, and the pastorate was then 
vacant for about two years, but has been filled continuously since 
except for occasional periods now and then of weeks or possibly a few 
months each. We know from the Congregational church records of 
date two or three years prior to 1825 that there must have been Baptist 
activity then, as occasionally a Congregationalist avowed belief in 
baptism by immersion, and Congregational and Baptist committees 
were in conference concerning occupancy of the court house as a place 
of worship. The Sabbath school was organized in 1833 ; a little earlier 
the building of a church edifice had been undertaken, and in June of 
that year the first service was held in it. The structure was of stone, 
located on Webster street, and the main auditorium was on the second 
floor. It was remodeled and redecorated in 1853. The basement was 
used for school purposes while the new academy was in course of con- 



480 History of Franklin County 

struction, and in 1881 the building was purchased by the county for an 
armory. A new church building of brick, with ample basement accom- 
modations for business and prayer meetings, etc., was begun in the 
spring of 1870, and was dedicated September 8, 1874. It cost $34,000, 
which exceeded by about $3,000 the pledges and payments in hand. 
Six years later this debt had increased to $5,000, but was then extin- 
guished after a money-raising campaign of three months. In 1917 the 
church steeple had become unsafe, and had to be taken down. During 
the winter of 1918 a service water pipe burst under the church floor, 
and the escaping water undermined the foundation walls of one of the 
towers and also a part of the wall of the main edifice. The damage is 
thought to be between six and eight thousand dollars. The present 
membership of the church is 433, though that figure includes a con- 
siderable number of non-residents. Eev. J. B. Webster, who had been 
pastor for a number of years, resigned in 1917 to "do his bit" in the 
war as a chaplain. Eev. Ivan Eose is his successor. 

The Methodist Episcopal church was not incorporated until May 2, 
1835, when the name " The Malone Methodist Episcopal Church " was 
adopted. At that date the conference records credit the society with 
having 310 members. In the autumn of the same year Oliver Brewster 
gave the organization a lot on the corner of Main and Fort Covington 
streets, where the Franklin House now is, and the erection of a church 
edifice was begun. It had a stone basement with a frame superstruc- 
ture, and was finished, at a cost of about $3,000, in 1838. It was 
known as Hedding Chapel, the eminent bishop of that name having 
presided at the dedication. The services of the church prior to its 
possession of a home of its own had been held in the court house, at 
the academy and other school houses, and perhaps occasionally in the 
cotton factory. Two years earlier than the incorporation the first 
leaders' meeting had been held, and in a paper prepared by Frank 
Bigelow a few years ago he noted interestingly that it was provided 
that if any member should be absent from a meeting a fine of not less 
than six nor more than twenty-five cents should be imposed, and for 
similar neglect by the president the fine should be not less than twelve 
nor more than fifty cents. A like rule to-day enforced would probably 
fill the church's treasury to overflowing. An account of the remarkable 
revival of 1836 is given in subsequent pages. 

Nothing especially eventful appears to have occurred between 1838 
and 1866, though, as Mr. Bigelow suggests in his historical sketch pre- 
pared in 1902, great changes were in process, but were wrought so 



Malone 481 

gradually as hardly to be perceived. In 1863 it had come to be felt that 
Hedding Chapel was no longer adequate to the society's needs and that 
its finish and general appearance were not quite all thai the house of 
worship of a strong and thriving organization ought to be. Accordingly 
a lot was purchased on the corner of Alain and Brewster streets, and in 
1866 construction of the present brick church was begun. The cost 
was $40,000, exclusive of organ and bell, which were the gift of Warren 
L. Manning, and cost about $3,000. Dedication occurred August 21, 
1867. The undertaking imposed a large indebtedness, whirl) bore 
burdensomely upon the members, and wrote a dark page in the church's 
history. The present membership is about 600, and there are numerous 
subordinate auxiliary organizations, manifesting zealous interest and 
helpful activity. The name was changed in 1878 to Centenary Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church of Malone. 

So much is authenticated by the local records. Of earlier conditions, 
while Mr. Bigelow was unable in 1902 to gather anything, it is my 
good fortune to have obtained data from the conference records begin- 
ning with 1818 and continuing to the present. Tn that year the con- 
ference report gave this church sixty members, which suggests con- 
vincingly that it must have been of still earlier organization ; and. 
indeed, Dr. Hough, who wrote in 1850 when first-hand trustworthy 
oral information was obtainable, stated that the Malone circuit was 
formed in 1811 with sixty-one members, as a part of the Champlain 
district, with John T. Adams as minister, and a correspondent of the 
Palladium wrote in 1857 that the church (probably as distinguished 
from the circuit) was organized between 1810 and 1818. While Mr. 
Bigelow conjectures that some Methodist meeting must have been held 
here as early as 1802. because of the known circumstance that a mis- 
sionary or circuit rider labored in Burke that year and would likely 
visit Malone, the suggestion would seem to be negatived by the gen- 
erally accepted fact that the first religious service in the town was held 
July 4, 1804. 

But to return to certainly established facts. In 1818 the Malone 
ion was included in the Genesee conference, whose first appoi 
here was Charles Northrop. A list of Ins successors appears in the 
appendix, but Luther I ee calls for more than a mere mention. He 
served in Malone for two years ( 1.821 and 1828), and afterward became 
one of the most fiery and most eloquent of abolition agitators. During 
his work here Malone was the center of a circuit, embracing Malone, 
Constable, Westville, all of the western towns of the county, parts of 

16 



482 History of Franklin County 

Clinton and St. Lawrence counties, and appointments in Lower 
Canada. One who heard Mr. Lee in Bombay at that time has written 
that he was a queer figure of a man — low of stature, clad in a blue 
coat with brass buttons, white fur hat, white necktie and other habili- 
ments peculiar to Methodist preachers of that age; had stiff black hair, 
shaggy eyebrows, a clear, piercing eye, an abbreviated upper lip which 
disclosed his upper teeth, a robust chin, and an eminently expressive 
and rather pleasing countenance. The writer adds that he was full of 
controversy, that " his sermon was a benediction, and my life has been 
better for hearing it." Ten years later this same witness heard him 
in a county west of Franklin on slavery, with " a cast-iron logic about 
him that convinced any reasonable man," and " from that hour I was 
an abolitionist." The witness thus quoted tells of a rumor for which 
he could not vouch that at eighteen years of age Mr. Lee could not 
read, but that, marrying a superior woman, he was inspired to study, 
that within three years he was licensed to exhort, and that he was soon 
afterward elevated to the preacher rank. Upon leaving Malone he 
preached in Jefferson and Lewis counties, and then devoted himself for 
three years to lecturing on slavery. From 1841 to 1852 he was the 
editor of an anti-slavery paper, and in 1844 he withdrew from the 
Methodist Episcopal denomination because its attitude on the abolition 
question was not radical enough to satisfy him, and united with the 
Wesleyan Methodists; but in 1867 returned to his former affiliations. 
Among his church stations after 1852 were Syracuse and various places 
in Ohio and Michigan. He was also professor of theology in Michigan 
Union 'College at one time, and from 1864 to 1867 was connected with 
Adrian College in Michigan. 

St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church was founded September 22, 
1831, through the offices of Rev. Anson B. Hard, then stationed at 
Plattsburgh. The services, which were the first according to the 
Episcopalian ritual that were ever held in the county with the exception 
of lay readings by Major Duane in Duane, were at the court house, 
and twelve persons joined in effecting the organization. A number of 
these were not residents of Malone, at least four of the twelve belonging 
in other towns, and two more were from New York, living here only 
temporarily. Mr. Hard continued his ministration irregularly for a 
time and was succeeded for two years by a resident missionary who 
officiated twice a month in Malone, and once each in Chateaugay and 
Duane — the services here having been held in the court house or in 
the school house at the Arsenal Green, the latter of which has now been 



Malone 483 

converted into the Christian Science church. The first Sunday school 
was organized in 1834. Though not then, nor ever since, strong in 
numbers or in a wealthy membership, it determined in 1834 to erect a 
church edifice; but actually attempted nothing in that direction until 
1843. The exact date of the completion of the building is not known, 
but certainly was not later than the autumn of 1846. For considerable 
periods between 1831 and 1849 the church had no rector, but with the 
exception of occasional intervals of vacancies has had one continuously 
since the latter year. Its most distinguished rector was the late Charles 
F. Eobertson, D.D., during a part of the civil war period, who after- 
ward became bishop of Missouri. Agitation was begun in 1867 for the 
erection of a new church building, was dropped for a time, revived in 
1874, and in 1884 the old building was razed and the present edifice 
erected — a stone structure which avoids in a measure the old dry- 
goods box style of architecture. It cost about $20,000, for $4,000 of 
which debt had to be incurred; and as Episcopalian requirements are 
that the Lord must have more than an equity of redemption in a place 
set apart for His worship consecration had to be delayed until 1889, 
when the debt had been discharged. The present membership of the 
church is about 125. 

Though the records of conveyances in the county clerk's office show 
only two or three Irish names among the grantees in Malone earlier 
than 1830, John Talbot Smith's History of the Diocese of Ogdensburg 
is authority for the statement that a few immigrants of that nationality 
were here in 1820. With very few exceptions arrivals of French were 
later still. The nearest Catholic church until after 1830 was at St. 
Regis, 26 or 28 miles distant, and it was not unusual for the more 
devout of Malone's residents who professed the Roman Catholic faith 
to walk to St. Eeo-is and later to Ho»-ansburgh to celebrate the festivals 
of Christmas and Easter. Then Father Moore of Huntingdon, Que., 
began coming here at infrequent intervals to say mass, and upon one 
occasion Father Rafferty of Plattsbureh preached at the court house. 
Mr. Smith fixes the time of these first services as in June, 1831, and 
the place at John McFarlane's home, which was near the poor house. 
In 1836 Malone was attached to the Hogansburgh parish, and con- 
tinued a part of it until 1849, when it was made ah independent charge. 
During these thirteen years Father John McXultv and Father James 
Keveney, rectors at Hogansburgh, and possibly now and then some 
other priest who chanced to journev through this section, held occasional 
services in Malone. In 1836 Father McXultv bought a lot fronting on 



484 History of Franklin County 

Main street, just west of Rockland, for a church, parsonage and ceme- 
tery, and it is remembered that graves were many in front and at each 
side of the old chnrch building which stood at that point from 1837 
until about 1862 or 1863. This building was an unpretentious frame 
structure with a capacity of perhaps a hundred and fifty worshipers. 
It was enlarged by Father McCabe, probably about 1850 or 1851, by 
adding a transept, and was unusual in appearance because of a roofless 
veranda or platform that reached entirely across the front and along 
the east side of both the main edifice and the transept. A new church 
was begun by Father Anthony Theves in 1862 nearly on the site of the 
present edifice, but though the church had increased largely in numbers 
from the beginning of Father McCabe's rectorship, the members were 
yet generally of quite limited means, and the new building project was 
so ambitious in design and proportions that the work had to be arrested 
or a priest peculiarly adapted to its prosecution found to carry it 
through. Father Theves was accordingly transferred to another 
charge, and Father Francis Edward Van Compenholdt, known as " the 
church builder " because of his achievements in this line in other 
parishes, was assigned here. He was a Belgian, and probably because 
his surname was formidable to the English tongue, was always known 
locally as Father Francis. The work went forward energetically for a 
time, under Father James J. Sherry after the departure of Father 
Francis, but with burdensome debt piling up, until fire broke out in 
the building soon after the close of services on Sunday, September 4, 
1870, and the edifice was wholly destroyed. The insurance was hardly 
more than enough to cover the debt, so that the church had practically 
to start rebuilding almost as a new undertaking, the fire having wiped 
out the savings of years. Nevertheless courage and self-denial were 
equal to the emergency, and in the course of a little more than a vear 
the exterior of a new building had been almost finished, when a high 
wind tore off the roof and tumbled two of the walls into ruins, causing 
damage to the amount of $10,000. Still undaunted, the society again 
undertook to build, and within a short time the work had so progressed 
that services could be held in the basement. But when Father Bos- 
siter became rector he set his face inflexibly against the contracting 
of further debt, and thus it was not until 1882 that the building had 
advanced far enough toward completion to be deemed ready for dedica- 
tion. In the course of a few years the debt was reduced by -$25,000, 
and in 1905 the building was renovated and redecorated at a cost of 
several thousand dollars. In 1917 an organ was added at a cost of 
$3,500. 



Malone 485 

The first record of the church in the county dork's office is the deed 
of the lot bought by Father McNulty, and the second (as of dale July 
20, 1830) a certificate that at a meeting held thai day, at which 
Francis White and Neal McCaffrey presided, Barney Mallon, Michael 
Cowan and William Dorsey were elected trustees. The church was 
then without a distinguishing name, but the proceedings of a similar 
meeting held April 13, 1840, show that Barney MeGivney was warden, 
and that the society had been named St. Joseph Church of Malone. 
In 1848 the name appears in the record as the Roman Catholic Church 
of St. Joseph's at Malone. 

Father Bernard E. McCabe, the first settled rector, met a tragic 
death November 24, 1857. The rectory was discovered to be on fire, 
and those who responded first to the alarm found the body of the priest 
on the floor of his bedroom so charred as hardly to be recognizable as 
that of a human being. The conjecture was that while reading in lied 
he had dropped asleep, and that the candle had set fire to the bedding. 
The fire did not extend to any other part of the house. There are no 
records of the church extant of date earlier than 1858, and it may be 
that the history of the parish for the first nine years of its life was 
destroyed by this fire. 

Father William Rossiter became rector in 1877, having been pre- 
coded for a few months bv Father Patrick Ludden. who became vicar 
general of the diocese of Albany and then the first bishop of the diocese 
of Syracuse. Father Rossiter continued as reetor until his death in 
1908. Besides his priestly character, which commanded admiration 
and high respect, he had an engaging personality and was efficient as 
an executive. It was due largely to his management that the church 
debt was greatly reduced, and the fine church building completed, and 
in later years improved and beautified. 

Since 1849 the parishes of St. Mary's in ATalone. Bamror, West 
Banp-or, Brushton, Constable. Trout River, Chasm Falls, Burke and 
Chateaugay have been carved directly or indirectly from St. Joseph's, 
and still the church embraces to-day about 325 families, or probably 
1.300 or 1,400 souls, and was never stronger or more prosperous. Tt 
still carries a debt of about $8,000. Father John H. O'Ronrko. a ripe 
scholar of superior intellectual endowment and wide information, has 
keen rector since 1908, and enjoys in remarkable measure the affection 
of his people and the kind and appreciative regard of the community 
generally. 

The original church building was removed about 1862 or 18(13 to 



486 History of Franklin County 

face Eockland street, then only a lane, and a parochial school was 
opened in it by a Mr. Maguire, who is said to have been a fine scholar, 
but with many oddities, and not prepossessing in appearance. He was 
familiarly known as "Andy the Fiddler."' 

At about this time Father Francis bought the large stone building 
at the corner of Main and Fort 'Covington streets for a rectory, and it 
was occupied as such both by himself and by Father Sherry. About 
1873, however, it was given over to the Sisters of Mercy for a convent 
school, but for lack of financial support the enterprise had to be aban- 
doned within a short time, when the Sisters removed to Hogansburgh, 
where they entered upon a similar undertaking, which they have made 
a great success. 

In 1863 the grounds for the Fort Covington street cemetery were 
purchased by Father Francis. 

There was occasional Universalist preaching in Malone as early as 
1823 or 1824, and there is some reason for believing that a sort of 
organization of that denomination was formed here in 1835, though no 
society was actually incorporated until May 12, 1846. At this latter 
date a lot just west of the present Methodist Episcopal church was 
purchased and a church building erected upon it. The name was " The 
First Universalist Society of Malone, Franklin County, New York." 
The society was never large, and was frequently without a pastor for 
long periods. In 1884 the membership had become so small that serv- 
ices ceased to be held, and were never resumed. In 1892 the society 
was dissolved, and in 1894 its property was sold, with donation of the 
proceeds to St. Lawrence University. The building is now in part a 
store and in part a dwelling house. 

Methodist Episcopal services were held in South Malone, now known 
as Chasm Falls, at least as early as 1835 by Eev. C. L. Dunning, 
pastor at Malone, and in 1843 Eev. Almanzo Blackman, also located in 
Malone, formed a class there with Sherman Stancliff as leader. Eev. 
Norman L. Knights, a local preacher whose home was in the vicinity, 
also officiated more or less often in these early years, and possibly 
others not now known, — the services having been held usually in a 
building south of the Daniel Averill (now Dr. Harwood) place, which 
was erected for the double use of a school and house of worship, and 
was known as " The Temple." But no permanent or formal organiza- 
tion was effected until 1849, when Eev. Alonzo Wells supplied appoint- 
ments and performed pastoral work at both Chasm Falls and Duane, 
and the next year the two were consolidated under the name of Dnane 



Malone 487 

mission, attached to the Chateaugay circuit for two years, and then 
united with Dickinson. From that time to the present the charge has 
been supplied almost continuously — at first by clergymen stationed at 
vicinity places, and since 1867 by pastors duly assigned and residing 
in the district. A log chapel eventually took the place of " The 
Temple," and in 1867 the latter was displaced by the present brick 
church. In January, 1861, " The First Methodist Episcopal Church 
of the Town of Duane and Township Xumber Nine of the Town of 
Malone " was incorporated. The charge now includes not only Chasm 
Falls and Duane, but also Owl's Head, at which latter place a church 
building was erected in 1898, and the combined membership at the 
three places considerably exceeds two hundred. 

In the old days every country church was open as a matter of course 
for political meetings, and the writer was sent in 1872 with the late 
Hon. John I. Gilbert to speak at Chasm Falls. The church was 
crowded, and good old Sherman Stancliff — •sincere and earnest in 
everything — served as chairman. Mr. Stancliff's belief in Republi- 
canism and devotion to it was as strong and ardent as in his church, 
and it was therefore the most natural thing, and to him altogether 
appropriate, to dismiss the meeting by calling upon the audience to 
rise and all join in singing the Doxology ! 

The Irish and French Roman Catholics of Malone worshiped as 
one people at the same altar and under a single priest until the latter 
part of 1868, though not with the most cordial fraternization. Indeed, 
the two nationalities never mingle in real amity anywhere, and here 
there were special underlying facts and conditions to induce more than 
the usual segregation and friction, for the Irish had built the church 
originally and had contributed far the larger part to its support, so 
that they regarded the French as more or less intruders, while the 
French (of whom then a much smaller percentage understood and 
spoke English than now) were not greatly attracted to the services, and 
came to feel that they were not welcome in the sanctuary. Of the five 
or six hundred families of French extraction residing in Malone fifty 
or sixty years ago not more than thirty or forty made even a pretence 
of attending church. It was in such conditions that Father John B. 
LeGrand came to Malone from Keeseville in the autumn of 1868, and, 
as he entered it himself on the record, founded the French Roman 
Catholic Church of Malone, thereby beginning a work of utmost value 
and beneficence, on the 29th day of November, 1868. His first place 
of residence was the brick dwelling house adjoining the old Arsenal 



488 History of Franklin County 

Green school house, and in it he fitted up a small chapel, where and at 
St. Joseph's for the ensuing few months he said mass and held con- 
fession. In March, 1869, the old Albert Andrus homestead was pur- 
chased, and as soon as spring opened work was begun for the erection 
of a church that the French should have for their very own. A 
tentative organization, known as the French Eoman Catholic Church 
of 31 alone, was first formed, and legal incorporation was had May 21. 
1869, as " St. Mary's Church of Malone. Xew York," but commonly 
called Notre Dame, with the bishop, the vicar general, Father LeGrand, 
Edward Cherrier and Joseph Menard as trustees. On June 13th the 
corner stone was laid, with Rt. Eev. Edgar P. AYadhams, then vicar 
general of the diocese of Albany, and afterward bishop of the diocese 
of Ogdensburg, officiating. A rough floor laid on the foundations gave 
seating accommodations to the large assemblage that gathered for the 
ceremony. A procession, forming at St. Joseph's church, marched to the 
site of what was to become the Church of Our Lady, and so many were 
the participants that when the head of the line reached Arsenal Green 
the foot had not moved from St. Joseph's. The energy with which the 
work of building was prosecuted is indicated by the fact that two months 
later, on August 15th, service was held in the edifice, though it was of 
course far from finished and almost barn-like. Poor as the people were, 
they yet gave $3,000 for the work between August and Christmas, and 
$4,378 the next year, with generous contributions continued 'annually 
ever since. From the mere handful of the French who had formerly 
attended the services at St. Joseph's so great an interest was awakened 
that the new church came to be well filled almost every Sabbath, and 
though parishes at Constable and Chasm Falls were erected from St. 
Mary's in 1874 and 1877, respectively. St. Mary's to-day includes 1,002 
families, numbering 4,428 souls, celebrates an average of sixty or seventy 
marriages per year, has seventy-five deaths and performs two hundred 
baptisms. The church building has been finished and beautified, a bell 
and a fine organ furnished, the Andrus dwelling house has been replaced 
by a commodious and modern rectory, and extensive grounds purchased 
for a cemetery. The church property has an estimated value of $60,000, 
and the debt of the organization is only $5,000 or $6,000. The parish 
includes all of the town of Malone except the section known as Chasm 
Falls and parts of the towns of Bellmont and Westville, with perhaps a 
few scattering families in the edge of Constable. 

In 1873 a parochial school was opened in a building on Main street, 
opposite the Congregational church, but was continued for only a short 



Maloxe 489 

time. Again, in 1S91 or 1892, St. Mary's erected a fine building Eating 
the Arsenal Green north of the railroad, with co-operation by the Sisters 
of Mercy, and maintained a school in it for two or three years, hut 
the expense was more than the society could bear, and it was aban- 
doned in 1894. A year later the village school district bought the 
property, and uses it for the public schools. 

While undoubtedly no small part of all this accomplishment has 
been wrought, as it certainly has been preserved, through the ministra- 
tion and management of Father Edward Blanchard, rector for the past 
thirty-live years until 1918, to Father LeGrand belongs the unques- 
tioned credit of having instituted the work and forwarded it when the 
field seemed barren and the difficulties insurmountable. At the time 
when Father LeGrand began his labors in Malone conditions among 
the French could hardly have been worse. True, there were a few 
among them who were thrifty, intelligent and of good character, but 
a great many were improvident, ignorant, addicted to drink, unem- 
ployed by choice, not amenable to religious precept, brawling and 
vicious. Those of this latter type who were industrious at all were 
content to accept menial tasks, and apparently aspired to nothing better. 
Their children did not attend school, and illiteracy was the rule among 
them. Mot many owned their homes, the prevalent standard of living, 
including furnishings, surroundings, food and raiment, was low; and 
pride, ambition, moral conception and Sabbath observance seemed 
unknown to them. To the teachings, dominating character and 
influence and the tireless efforts of Father LeGrand is traceable very 
largely the marvelous change that fifteen years witnessed, and which 
is still in process. Father LeGrand had the misfortune to incur the 
enmity of some of his people toward the close of his pastorate, but what- 
ever the merits back of this contention may have been, I believe the 
fact to stand unchallengeable nevertheless that no clergyman of any 
denomination, with the possible exception of Doctor Parmelee, ever 
accomplished more real good (perhaps none as much) in Malone as 
Father LeGrand. He deserves the lasting gratitude not merely of his 
own people, hut of the citizenry at large. He died at Glens Falls May 
18, 1891, after having been a priest for forty-four years. 

Father Edward Blanchard was rector of St. Mary's from January, 
1884, to December, 1917. More sociable and more tactful than Father 
LeGrand. but not less an earnest worker, all of the betterment won 
under the latter has not only been held secure, but augmented. It is 
widely regretted that bis health compelled him to tender his resignation, 



490 History of Franklin County 

to become effective with the close of the year 1917. However, he is to 
continue to make Malone his home, and expects to join in 1918 in cele- 
brating both the semi-centennial of his own ordination and of the 
founding of the church for which he has done so much. Eev. T. 
Campeau is his successor. 

St. Helen's Church of Chasm Falls was founded by Father LeGrand 
in 1877, and its house of worship was built and paid for with funds 
which he persuaded friends in France to contribute. The first trustees 
were Joseph Boyea and David Boivin, and for four years Father 
LeGrand himself officiated as rector. There are 103 families in the 
parish, and for nearly all of the time since 1881 the church has had a 
resident rector. 

There had been here and there in Malone for a long time a few 
disciples of Mrs. Eddy, but without any society or united association 
until perhaps ten or twelve years ago. They then banded together 
informally, and in June, 1913, incorporated legally as the " First 
Church of Christ, Scientist, Malone, New York," with Caroline J. 
Phillips, Sadie W. Lawrence, Williamine S. Childs, Helen M. Gurley 
and Fred F. Fisk as trustees. The organization's membership numbers 
fifteen or twenty, and occupies the old Arsenal Green school house under 
lease for a place of meeting. The attendance at the service is ordinarily 
between forty and fifty. Miss Clara M. Russell has established herself 
in town as a Christian Science practitioner. 

Protracted revivals have been numerous. Besides those of compara- 
tively recent years, conducted by B. Fay Mills a generation ago, and by 
M. R. Rees in 1905 and in 1915-16 — the latter continuing through 
five weeks, with the services held in a building erected expressly for 
them, and of capacity greater than that of any of the churches, and 
adding 250 or 300 to the membership of the Baptist, Congregational and 
Methodist Episcopal churches — there have been three which call for 
particular mention. The first, conducted by Doctor Parmelee without 
outside assistance, was in 1816, following a period which Rev. C. S. 
Richardson, pastor of the Congregational church, described in 1876 
as having immediately succeeded three years during which " profaneness 
in vilest form was common in our streets, on the Sabbath as well as 
other days. Gambling and bacchanalian revel were common as never 
before witnessed here. Money was at one time in abundance, but by 
whatever means obtained, whether by honest toil or frauds or pilfering, 
it was often hastily wasted at the gaming table or in scenes of intem- 
perance." But, still following Mr. Richardson's narrative, " the verj 



Malone 491 

beginning of the year 1816 was signalized by extreme thoughtfulness on 
the part of all classes. Religious topics became the staple of conversa- 
tion. On the highway the pastor was accustomed to be met with an 
earnest inquiry by an apparent stranger upon some one of the funda- 
mental doctrines. * * * This was not a period of fanaticism — not a 
blaze of religious fervor and then a heap of mouldering embers, but the 
fire was kindled on the heart's altar and burned with a clear, steady 
glow. * * * The revival left its seal on the following years. 
Indeed, the church has not yet outgrown the spiritual power of that 
single season. One hundred, between May and September of that year, 
joined this body." 

The next notable religious movement of like character came in 1836, 
and was under Methodist Episcopal direction, though the Congre- 
gationalists always shared in the evening services. Eev. Charles L. 
Dunning was the Methodist pastor here, and Eev. James Erwin was in 
charge of the Chateaugay circuit. The latter's boyhood had been 
passed at Fort Covington, he had preached a number of times at camp 
meetings in Malone, and he was persuaded to come here in the winter 
of 1836 and work with Mr. Dunning. The services were held in the 
court house, the judge's desk serving as pulpit, a bench back of it for 
seating the participating clergy, and the inclosure in front which is 
usually occupied in court time by attorne}^, witnesses and litigants 
for the men and women who led in prayer and were active helpers in 
the work, and also as a " mourner's bench." As a general thing meet- 
ings were held three times a day — those in the morning " for the bene- 
fit of the church, the establishing of converts, and for instructing peni- 
tents in the way of faith ;" those in the afternoon for preaching, fol- 
lowed by prayer, and continuing sometimes until the evening service, 
which was on many accounts the most important of the day, as many, 
otherwise engaged mornings and afternoons, could then be present. In 
the evening there was always a sermon, usually addressed to the uncon- 
verted, followed by a rousing exhortation, and then " by one, two or 
three hours spent in united, earnest prayer, singing and giving instruc- 
tion to the penitents. * * * Great crowds attended the meetings 
from all the country around. They came from Bangor, Constable, 
Burke, Bellmont, and from 'up south.' * * * Some revivals 
bring in young people mainly ; others an older class. But this took 
old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. It was one of 
God's great ' flood tides '." The work continued without abatement for 
six weeks, the crowds increasing until the breaking up of the roads in 



-192 History of Franklin County 

the spring interrupted travel. " The Sabbath crowds were immense. 
People came from great distances, bringing refreshments with them, 
and spent the entire day, from the nine o'clock lovefeast to the close of 
the service,'-' which was never until nearly midnight. " Sunday was 
the great seed sowing day, and on Monday we gathered the harvest," 
the conversions always being most numerous on that day. Mr. Erwin 
preached more than sixty sermons during the six weeks, and at the 
conclusion of his final effort fell in the pulpit, and could do no more 
preaching for three years, but was eventually so restored to health and 
strength that he continued active in the ministry for a third of a century 
and more. 

Another remarkable revival was in the spring of 1840, a Congre- 
gational activity, with Eev. Jedediah Burchard the principal worker. 
Mr. Burchard was an evangelist of considerable repute and an enthu- 
siastic and eloquent preacher, who exercised much ■ control over his 
audiences, and caused a great deal of excitement and religious fervor. 
One stipulation in the arrangements which brought him to Malone 
required that he be supplied daily with fresh beef — which had to be 
brought by stage from Plattsburgh. A resident of that time, who gave 
some of his recollections to the press at a much later date, irreverently 
called Mr. Burchard's meetings a "howling success"; and added that 
the evangelist had formerly been a circus rider, and that in transports 
of exhortation he would leap from the pulpit and do acrobatic stunts 
in front of it. which is the more believable because Sanford's history 
of the town of Hopkinton, where Mr. Burchard went from Malone, 
states that " he would walk about among the people in the audience 
on the tops of the backs of the square pews, loudly and eloquently 
exhorting them to give up their wicked ways, and thus save themselves 
from eternal hell fire." In one sermon he described a great seething, 
roaring blast furnace which melted ore to a white heat, and declared 
that, inconceivably hot as the furnace was, hell was so much hotter that 
if one of its inmates could be transferred to the furnace he would freeze 
to death in five minutes! Mr. Burchard died at Adams, Jefferson 
county, in 1864. There is no authentic information available in regard 
to the permanency of Mr. Burchard's work in Malone other than that 
he sowed seeds of dissension between Doctor Parmelee and his people, 
which weakened the influence of the pastor, and which, after the evan- 
gelist's departure, nearlv divided the church. As his son said in a 
biography of Doctor Parmelee, Mr. Burchard's "peculiar way of 
preaching, conducting meetings and telling ludicrous anecdotes were 



Malone 493 

quite distasteful,'* and doubtless this disapproval rankled with those 
who were enamored of the evangelist, so that friction and animosities 
were created — resulting after a few years in the pastor's resignation. 
Cordial relations were restored later, however. 

Northern Constellation Lodge, No. 148, F. and A. M v to be located 
at any convenient place within the towns of Chateaugay or Itarison, 
was authorized December 3. 1806, and continued in existence for nearly 
thirty years ; but becoming inactive during the Morgan excitement 
because of the withdrawal of many members • and because also of the 
then popular reprehension of the order, the continuing members were 
unable by reason of the scarcity of money to pay their dues. For 
this latter condition the charter was forfeited June L is:;,",, its la 
vious return to the grand lodge having been in 182 7, when it had 
members. Reorganization was had in 1851 under the original name. 
with the number changed to 291. From this latter date the lodge has 
been uninterruptedly active, and now has close to 300 members in good 
standing. The first master in 1806 was Albon Man, and the first under 
the reorganization Clark Williamson, who in 1834 had preserved the 
jewels of the lodge by burying them. The elective officers for 1918 are: 
E. J. Feed W. M., Grant':. Collins S. W., J. P. Badger J. W.. T. T. 
Buttrick secretary, and S. M. Howard treasurer. 

Northern Constellation Chapter, No. 28, B. A. M., was chartered 
February 7, 1810, and, unlike the lodge, has maintained a continuous 
existence, though it was not active during anti-Masonic times, nor until 
some twenty years later. No record is available of the number of its 
charter members. Its first officers were: Albon Man high priest, 
Samuel Peck king, and Samuel Pease scribe. Upon the revival of 
the organization in 1853 Josiah F. Saunders was high priest, Philip 
B. Miller king, and F. P. Allen scribe. There are at present 218 
members, and the elective officers for 1918 are: Grant G. Collins high 
priest, C. L. Lowell king, E. J. Beecl scribe, C. W. Bussell secretary, 
and X. M. Marshall treasurer. 

Franklin Commandery, No. 60, Knights Templar, was instituted 
January 8, 1885, but had been in existence by a dispensation from 
April 28, 1881. There were something like 20 or 25 charter members, 
and the officers at institution were: W. H. Gray eminent commander, 
G. W. Dustin generalissimo, D. H. Stanton captain general, Bev. 
W. G. W. Lewis prelate, S. A. Beman S. Y\\, lb C. Wentworth .). \Y.. 
W. B. Flanagan treasurer, T. Alfred Quaile recorder. L. C. Shepard 
standard bearer, II. If. Uickok sword bearer, S. C. Paddock warder. 



494 History of Franklin County 

G. H. Kidney captain of the guard, J. A. Hogle, N. W. Porter and 
E. W. Lawrence guards. The present officers are: Ernest S. Mason 
eminent commander, Herbert H. Seaver generalissimo, Roy N. Porter 
captain general, Rev. J. B. Webster prelate, Grant G. Collins S. W., 
Geo. W. Calkins J. W., A. W. Gamble treasurer, R. McC. Miller 
recorder, Geo. H. Houston standard bearer, Carroll T. Douglass sword 
bearer, Chas. L. Lowell warder, and P. H. Tummons, G. C. Dewey and 
John S. Keeler guards. The present membership is 254. 

At one period the lodge was moved to Fort Covington for a time 
because exorbitant rental was demanded for a hall in Malone. Other- 
wise its situs has always been in Malone, and for more than twenty 
years it and the chapter occupied rooms over the Dewey & Smith and 
Buttrick stores, and then for. nearly thirty years in Centennial Block. 
In 1904 the Masonic Temple Association was organized, with the lodge, 
the chapter and the commandery each equally represented in the board 
of trustees, and purchased and fitted up the Dr. Skinner place for a 
temple, in which each organization has accommodations. In 1907 a 
fair for the benefit of the order netted funds to the amount of $6,700. 

Neshoba Lodge, No. 351, I. 0. O. F. (renumbered 78), organized 
March 15, 1848, under a dispensation by the grand lodge granted upon 
the application of a group of well known citizens (including Dr. Bates, 
Dr. Skinner and F. T. Heath) who had visited Potsdam a short time 
previously for initiation in the order. The first lodge room was in the 
old so-called Harison Academy, and now spacious quarters are occu- 
pied in Howard Block. At least twice the lodge room was destroyed 
by fire. The first officers were : Sidney P. Bates N. G., S. C. F. Thorn- 
dike Y. G.. Henrv S. Brewster secretary, and IT. D. Meeker treasurer. 
The order found favor from the first on the part of leading citizens, and 
grew rapidly in numbers. The present membership is 135, and the 
officers for 1918 are: James Flynn N. G., George Carr V. G., Charles 
Whipple secretary, A. L. Paro treasurer, and Charles Whipple, Frank 
G. Roby and L. M. Kellas trustees. John P. Kellas was grandmaster 
of the grand lodge in 1901 and 1902. 

J. C. Drake, D. S. Camp, J. E. Beardsley, Horatio Peck, Wesley 
Jones, C. B. Beardsley and M. S. Mallon were authorized by the State 
organization January 15, 1885, to hold an encampment in Malone to 
be known as Neshoba Encampment No. 30, I. O. O. F. The records 
were lost some years ago by fire, and the number of charter members 
and the first officers are unknown. The organization now has 26 mem- 
bers, and its officers are: Isadore Thanhauser chief patriarch, Clarence 



Malone 495 

S. Mason S. W., Eldon Newcomb high priest, Haydn Nimblett J. W., 
Geo. H. Nickelson secretary, and Geo. W. Rowe treasurer. 

Of the many helpful services rendered by Father LeGrand in Malone 
few rank higher than his organization of the St. John Baptist Society 
October 9, 1872. The society is not a branch or subordinate chapter of 
any general order, but is independent and purely local. It is both fra- 
ternal and benevolent. Membership is permitted only to those of 
French extraction who are Catholics, and in good health. It pays bene- 
fits of from $3 to $5 per week in cases of sickness, contributes to the 
funeral expenses of those who die, and assesses each member one dollar 
for a fund to be paid to the estate of any deceased brother. The char- 
ter members numbered 40, and the present number is close to 400. Start- 
ing with nothing, the society some years later purchased a building on 
Mill street in which it fitted up a hall for meetings, and has recently 
bought the fine home of the late Mrs. S. A. Beman for lodge uses and a 
club home. It has no debt, and has funds in its treasury. The original 
trustees were Edward Cherrier, Moise Viau, Joseph Menard, Moise 
Gibeault, Samuel Aubrey, and Thomas Deparois. The officers are : Bev. 
Edward Blanchard chaplain, David Dubois president, Antoine Dubois 
vice-president, Napoleon Dufore secretary, J. B. Marceau correspond- 
ing secretary, F. X. Delisle financial secretary, Henry W. Labarge 
assistant financial secretary, and Alex. Dumas orderly. An auxiliary 
organization, consisting of about 40 members equipped with uniforms, 
is without distinctive functions except to appear in processions. Its 
officers are : F. X. Rozon commander, Henry Champagne first lieu- 
tenant, Albert Gibbo quartermaster, Samuel Benoit corporal, and John 
B. Marceau secretary. There are also about 50 St. John Baptist Cadets, 
composed of the sons of members, who are in training to unite at the 
proper age with the main society. 

Council LeGrand is a subordinate organization of the St. John Bap- 
tist Union, which is national in its scope, and was chartered July 15, 
1910, with 16 members. The order is of a fraternal and insurance 
character, with low premium rates, and pays both sick benefits and 
death claims. The first officers were : Joseph Brunet president, C. L. 
Pinsonneault vice-president, H. E. Pinsonneault secretary, and M. H. 
Burno treasurer. There are now 200 members, and the present officers 
are : Ralph J. Cardinal president, Edward Dumas vice-president, J. I. 
Carmel secretary, and George Gratton treasurer. 

Brennan Post No. 284, G. A. R., was organized August 12, 1882, 
with 23 charter members, and it has had in all 350 names on its muster 



496 History of Franklin County 

rolls. Its first officers were: Daniel H. Stanton commander, H. B. 
Meigs senior vice commander, S. S. Millard junior vice commander, 
H. D. Hickok adjutant, E. J. Mannix quartermaster, Eaiph Erwiii sur- 
geon, R. McC. Miller 0. D., John MeSorley 0. G., C. R. Doty sergeant 
major, and G. D. Hastings quartermaster sergeant. Deaths and remov- 
als have reduced the roster to 23 names. The officers for 1918 are: 
Thomas Denio commander, Luke Tebo senior vice commander, Peter 
Roberts junior vice commander, Henry Fobere surgeon, John Curtis 
chaplain, L. P. Chandler quartermaster and adjutant, Theodore 
Robinson 0. D., and Charles Dumas 0. G. 

J. W. Pangburn Post Xo. 312, Gk A. R., was organized July 28, 
1895, with 14 charter members, who were mostly withdrawals from Bren- 
nan Post. The first officers were: Orville Moore commander, Hiram T. 
French senior vice commander, G. P. Xorris junior vice commander, 
A. C. Hadley surgeon, M. X. Dawson 0. D., H. D. Hickok quarter- 
master, H. J. Merriam chaplain, H. H. Davis 0. G., and B. H. Spencer 
sentinel. Tbere are at present 10 members, and the officers for 1918 are 
R. McC. Miller commander, II. J. Merriam senior vice commander, 
A. C. Hadley junior vice commander, L. B. Chase surgeon, H. H. 
Davis 0. D., L. B. Sperry adjutant, C. H. Totman chaplain and 
quartermaster, and E. S. Kelsey 0. G. 

Malone Council Xo. 308, Knights of Columbus, was chartered Feb- 
ruary 13, 1898, with fifty members. The first officers were: E. D. Hol- 
land grand knight, James T. Welch deputy grand knight, George F. 
Cowan recording secretary, M. F. McGarrahan treasurer, and Charles 
A. Burke lecturer. The organization now has 226 members, and its 
officers are : J. W. Starks grand knight, James P. Lyng deputy grand 
knight, T. J. McKee financial secretary, and W. H. Mclvee treasurer. 

" The Wadhams Reading Circle of Malone, Xew York ", was organ- 
ized upon the advocacy of Mrs. B. Ellen Burke Xovember 11, 1897, for 
"promotion of religious instruction, self culture, the dissemination of 
good literature and the acquisition of power and strength from union." 
It has held fortnightly meetings regularly beginning in October and 
continuing into May, with fixed topics for study and discussion — both 
men and women having parts in the programmes — and has estab- 
lished a free circulating library, which now numbers 3,500 volumes. 
For several years the village voted it $200 per year for the purchase of 
books, etc. There were 19 charter members, and the first officers were: 
Father AVilliam Rossiter chaplain, Mrs. B. Ellen Burke president, Mrs. 
Eliza J. Kelley and Mrs. Jennie V. Holland vice-presidents, Lizzie G. 



Malone 497 

Eennie secretary and treasurer, and Edward Pierce and James F. Kelley 
librarians. There are now something like 80 members, and the present 
officers are: Rev. J. H. O'Bourke chaplain, Mrs. 1'. IT. Dalphin presi- 
dent, Mrs. M. J. Crowley and Mary E. O'Eourke vice-presidents, and 
Lena Caskin secretary and treasurer. 

Adirondack Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution 
was formed in 1899 with ten charter members. The first officers were: 
Mrs. John W. Fay regent, Mrs. Joel J. Seaver registrar, Miss Alice 
Hyde treasurer, and Miss Florence Channell secretary. The members 
now number TO, and the present officers are: Mrs. C. L. Capron regent, 
Mrs. Anabel S. Huntington vice-regent, Mrs. W. 11. Montross secretary, 
Mrs. Geo. B. Humphrey treasurer, and Miss Angeline B. Fulli 
historian. 

Malone Grange No. 959, Patrons of Husbandry, was organized in 
1903, with 35 charter members, and the number now is 453. It occu- 
pies the old King's Hall for a lodge room, and holds meetings twice 
monthly, with a programme mapped out for a year in advance, which 
is designed to afford both entertainment and instruction. Not only mat- 
ters pertaining to agriculture are discussed, but also various public prob- 
lems. Besides providing wholesome entertainment and promoting neigh- 
borliness and sociability, the organization thus makes itself practically 
educative to its farmer members. Among the first officers were S. !•'.. 
Willett as master, James W. Delong as overseer, Mrs. Delia C. Delong 
as lecturer, and Ernest C. Gleason as secretary. The present officers 
are : William J. Wheeler master, Floyd P. King overseer, Mrs. Elmer 
A. Eddy lecturer, E. A. Eddy steward, Clarence Boyea assistant steward, 
Mrs. 0. H. Cook chaplain, Lyman L. Foote secretary, Lawrence E. 
Westcott treasurer. Guy W. Whipple gate keeper, Mrs. Henry Badore 
Flora, Mrs. Guy Whipple Ceres, Mrs. Geo. Parker Pomona, Mrs. John 
Wheeler L. A. S., and F. A. Hadley insurance director. 

The Franklin County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals obtained its charter in February, 1907, and has accomplished 
great good in the eleven years of its existence by compelling observance 
of humane practices in particular cases and also through its educa- 
tive work. Earlier than the society's organization a few individuals 
(the late Mrs. S. A. Beman more than any one else) had operated inde- 
pendently for the cause, but always at a disadvantage and with a great 
deal of personal unpleasantness. Now the society keeps an agent busy 
all of the time looking up abuses and instituting prosecutions where 
such are necessarv to establish better care of animals. The first ofn- 



498 History of Franklin County 

cers were: Henry Furness president, Eev. J. H. Brown and Eev. E. 
Blanchard vice-presidents, Miss Lucia Gilbert secretary, Mrs. L. H. 
Phillips assistant secretary, and Miss May Badger treasurer. The pres- 
ent officers are: George B. Humphrey president, Eev. E. Blanchard 
and C. H. Moody vice-presidents, Miss Lucia Gilbert secretary, and 
Miss Florence Mallon treasurer. 

Malone Lodge No. 1303, B. P. 0. Elks, was instituted May 29, 
1913, with 37 members, and as the entertainment and large benefits 
which the order afforded became known applications for membership 
began to pour in largely — considerable numbers of them from other 
towns. No other fraternal organization in Malone ever seized so 
quickly and so widely upon the popular fancy, and the result is that, 
counting those awaiting initiation, there are now five hundred mem- 
bers. A social club from the beginning, the lodge has become in effect 
a center from which a bountiful benevolence to the poor has been dis- 
pensed, where civic duties are considered and wrought out, and where, 
by the generous permission of the members, headquarters are found by 
many organizations that are engaged in seeking to further Malone's 
welfare and in doing war work. The lodge acquired the former resi- 
dence of Vice-President Wheeler, and has so enlarged and improved the 
property that it represents an expenditure of $60,000, and affords not 
merely an ample and luxurious home for the lodge, but also accommo- 
dations for social and business purposes that could not be bettered. 
The first officers were: F. E. Kirk exalted ruler, George J. Moore 
esteemed leading knight, M. J. Slason esteemed loyal knight, Dr. H. D. 
Mayne esteemed lecturing knight, W. J. Bulger secretary, Levi A. 
Pratt treasurer, W. W. Smith esquire, L. M. Kellas tiler, Eev. H. A. 
Barrett chaplain, Henry Gonyaw inner guard, and George W. Crooks, 
N". M. Marshall and Jay O. Ballard trustees. The officers for 1918 are: 
M. J. Slason exalted ruler, W. W. Smith esteemed loyal knight, Henry 
G. Gonyaw esteemed lecturing knight, W. J. Bulger secretary, Levi A. 
Pratt treasurer, L. M. Kellas esquire, J. E. Carroll tiler, A. E. Mor- 
rison inner guard, Eev. H. A. Barrett chaplain, and B. E. Clark, 
Thomas Cantwell and W. C. Leonard trustees. 

The Farrar Home for Deserving Old Ladies 

Isaac B. Farrar, a retired farmer, bequeathed most of his property 
in 1900 to Mrs. Clara Kilburn and Mrs. Ella Symonds in trust for the 
establishment, support and endowment of a charitable institution to be 
located at Malone, and to be styled The Farrar Home for Deserving 



Malone 499 

Old Ladies. A corporation was formed the same year to take over the 
trust, which eventually yielded $11,225 — too small a sum to give effect 
to Mr. Farrar's purpose. But Miss Martha Meeker bequeathed $1,000 
to the institution, auxiliary organizations were formed to solicit funds 
and donations of furniture, etc., and a "tag day" in 1909 provided 
several hundred dollars, so that after nine or ten years the home owned 
a house, valued at $4,000, on the corner of Constable and Second streets, 
and had investments aggregating about $13,600. The home was' 
opened January 6, 1910, with five inmates, and its maintenance expenses 
from that date have run from about $1,000 to $2,100 a year. The 
house has been enlarged and improved in many respects, and now can 
accommodate sixteen inmates. The auxiliaries have contributed 
$12,000 in the past eight or nine years, and a bequest of $5,000 by Dr. 
Henry Furness and one of $1,000 by Mrs. Letitia Greeno have been 
added to the endowment, which now totals $44,300, with a considerable 
bequest by Mrs. Greeno to be realized later. The house is now valued 
at $12,500. Every woman admitted is required to assign and transfer 
to the trustees all property that she possesses or may acquire — a mini- 
mum payment of $250 being necessary to secure admission. The first 
directors were Mrs. Jeanette R. Hawkins, Mrs. Letitia Greeno, George 
W. Dustin, G. Herbert Hale and Aaron C. Allison. Mrs. Hawkins was 
the first president, Mrs. Greeno the first vice-president, Mrs. Mary L. 
King the first secretary, and Marshall E. Howard the first treasurer.' 
These officers have been continued uninterruptedly to the present except 
that Mr. Dustin has succeeded Mrs. Greeno, deceased, as vice-president. 
The present directors are : Mrs. Hawkins, George W. Dustin, Marshall 
E. Howard, G. Herbert Hale, William L. Allen,' Miss Florence Mallon 
Mrs. Clara Kilburn, Mrs. John A. Grant, Mrs. Helen Lillis and Mrs! 
Mary L. King. 

Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital 
Necessity for a general hospital had been felt for vears, with occa- 
sional spasmodic agitation in favor of building or renting for the pur- 
pose, but without action because it was regarded as impossible to pro- 
cure sufficient funds. In 1904, however, The Malone Hospital Associa- 
tion was incorporated, with the following directors : John P Bad^r 
Henry Furness, John I. Gilbert, William Eossiter, Edward BlanchaV 
S. A. Beman, Sidney Robinson, Thomas Cantwell, Marshall E Howard' 
Frederick D. Kilburn, Frank S. Channell, Percival F. Dalphin Alfred 
G. Wilding, John A. Flanagan, Joseph W. Brown, Jay O. Ballard Charles 
W. Collins, Charles W. Breed, Aaron C. Allison, Martin E. McClary and 



500 History of Franklin County 

John Keller. Mr. Badger was president, Dr. Furness vice-president. Mr. 
Allison treasurer, and Mr. Flanagan secretary. Nothing tangible was 
attempted by the organization for a number of years, nor was any- 
thing definite even proposed for a long time except to talk about renting 
or buying a private house to be used for hospital purposes. In 1908 
Mrs. Mary A. Leighton bequeathed $10,000 for an endowment fund, 
and in 1910 Clark J. Lawrence offered $25,000 for the erection of a 
building upon condition that an equal sum be raised by subscription, 
that the name of the association be changed to the Alice Hyde Hospital 
Association, and that the institution be known as The Alice Hyde 
Memorial Hospital. The conditions were gratefully accepted by the 
directors, and the work of canvassing for subscriptions was undertaken 
earnestly and prosecuted energetically. A fund of about $50,000 was 
soon pledged by subscribers in almost every town in the county in sums 
of from a thousand dollars down to a dollar or two each. The directors 
voted in 1911 to erect a brick fire-proof building, two stories in height, 
on the corner of Park and Third streets, at an estimated cost of about 
$43,000. The corner stone was laid October 8, 1911, and the institu- 
tion was formally opened September 15, 1913. It is almost continu- 
ously filled with patients, has an adequate corps of superintendents and 
nurses, a nurses' training school, a consulting staff composed of eminent 
non-resident physicians and surgeons, and house physicians who are 
local practitioners and serve alternately without compensation. Since 
the opening of the institution Mr. and Mrs. Jay O. Ballard offered in 
1916 to contribute $2,500 for the erection of a building for a contagious 
hospital as a memorial to Mrs. Ballard's father and mother, Dr. and 
Mrs. Calvin Skinner, upon condition that an equal amount be raised 
by subscription ; and $13,604 was so pledged for the purpose stated and 
for other desired improvements. Colonel William C. Skinner of Hart- 
ford, Conn, (son of Dr. Calvin Skinner) offered at about the same time 
to erect a nurses' home at a cost of $10,000, and later removed the limit. 
As a result a fine structure has been provided. Mrs. Mary L. King and 
Mrs. J. C. Levengood contributed $1,500 each to equip the operating 
room as a memorial to their father, Hon. Sidney Lawrence of Moira, and 
Mrs. Kelson W. Porter, Mrs. Jay O. Ballard, Mrs. Jessie Keeler LaselL, 
Howard D. Hadley and Gustina Gibson gave $250 or more each to fur- 
nish rooms as memorials to deceased relatives. Besides the subscrip- 
tions, the Leighton bequest and the Lawrence donation, Baker Stevens 
gave to the association during his lifetime a farm which was sold for 
$5,125, Dr. Henry Furness bequeathed $5,000 to it, Baker Stevens 
$7,378, S. A. Beman a store and office building estimated to be worth 



Maloxf 50] 

$12,000, Clark J. Lawrence about $50,000, Manlm ,). Ryan of Fort 
Covington $200 and Robert J. Taylor of Bellmoni $500; and Mrs. Lois 
Lawrence and Mrs. Clara Kilburn have recently given $1,000 
The present directors are: Xelson W. Porter, John Kelley, Phelps 
Smith. Brayton P. Clark, John A. Grant, Ralph Hastings. Malt ('. Ran- 
som, Edward Blanchard, John P. Kellas, Alexander MLaedonald, Thomas 
Cantwell, Hugh H. Mnllarney, Arthur E. McClary, William H. O'Brien, 
P. Roy Kirk. Pereival F. Dalphin, Alfred C. Wilding, Jay 0. Ballard, 
John A. Flanagan, G. Herbert Hale and George B. Humphrey. Mr. 
Ballard is president, Mr. Porter vice-president, Mr. Ransom treasurer, 
and Mr. McClary secretary. 

Maloxe ix War Times 

Malone has been touched closely, and at times poignantly, by four 
wars. In that of 1812 with Great Britain it had two militia companies 
whose headquarters were in Malone, and whose personnel was mainly, if 
not wholly, recruited here, while other residents took the field as mem- 
bers of other local units; the inhabitants were continuously in appre- 
hension and dread of enemy incursions or of Indian massacres; the 
place was for months an army hospital base with inadequate shelter 
accommodations and a pitiful shortage of proper food, medicines, and 
even bedding and clothing for the sick; a British force occupied the 
town for a day upon one occasion in 1814 — invading individual privacy 
and in some instances perpetrating depredations; and the spirit and 
practices of the time corrupted morals and brought lamentable demoral- 
ization generally. There were no battle casualties locally, nor was the 
spirit of patriotism universally prevalent. 

As a whole Malone's part in the civil war was large and creditable 
(even glorious is hardly too strong a word), though blackened in a 
measure by the talk and conduct of a few men who were in open sym- 
pathy with the South. Some of these did not scruple when volunteers 
departed for the field of action to avow hope that they would return 
only "in a box," to flaunt pins made from the faces of the old-time 
copper cents as proclamation of their " copperheadism," and to heap 
upon the President, his advisers and the generals of the Union armies 
the bitterest vituperation. But these wrre so small a minority, and their 
sentiments so execrated by the ardent patriotism of the majority, that 
they were scorned, and forfeited standing to the degree that both in 
business and socially they were practically ostracised. 

At once following the attack upon Fort Sumter in Charleston bar- 



502 



History of Franklin County 



bor war meetings were held, the first at the Congregational church 
April 25th, a company was soon raised, with a few of ^embers fur- 
nished by neighboring towns, and started for the front May 6, 1861, 
and throughout the four years that the struggle continued recruiting 
went on to fill depleted commands already in the service, or to add new 
contingents. Besides the first company sent ^^^^ 
a oart of th* 16th regiment, a company was raised for the 60th, seven 
companies for the 98th, two for the 106th and three ^ the 112 d while 
there were also many individual and group enlistments m the 96th and 
118th, whose headquarters for organization were elsewhere in Northern 
New York, as well as in particular commands of artillery and cavalry 
that appealed especially to some of the volunteers Of course not all 
who composed the units referred to, or who were identified with scat- 
tered regiments, were Malone residents, but many were gathered from 
other towns in the county, and to a small number from the bordering 
towns in St. Lawrence and Clinton; but this was the center of inspira- 
tion and activity. General Thorndike was active in recruiting, and 
William Lowe conducted a recruiting office independently for a long 
time, assigning such men as he enlisted to the various regiments which 
they wished to join, or turning them over to the men who were raising 
companies of which thev were to be captains or lieutenants if they 
reported with some specified number of recruits. Commissions went m 
those days to men who were civilian leaders, and without examination 
as to military qualification. Five recruiting officers were active here 
at one time in 1862. There were no preliminary training camps for 
those who were to serve as officers, nor for the rank and file except 
during the period that they were in local barracks awaiting the filling 
of a command. Then the regiments or companies were rushed straight to 
the battle line — a practice which undoubtedly explains Bull Run and 
many other disasters. According to a list compiled by the late Major 
Daniel H. Stanton, the whole number of Malone men who were in the 
armv during the four years from 1861 to 1865 was 564 - which, however, 
counts each man but once, and does not take into consideration the 
fact that a considerable number of these re-enlisted after having com- 
pleted one term of service, so that the actual number of men finished 
• at one time and another by Malone would doubtless reach well above 600. 
Among these there were a few, perhaps 10 per cent., who were drafted, 
but by far the larger part were volunteers. 

The drafts during the civil war were on very different lines trom 
those which govern in the war of 1917. At the first of the drafts a 



Mat.one 503 

man who was drawn might accept service himself, procure release by 
the payment of $300 in money, or furnish a substitute. In the later 
drafts there was no provision for a money commutation, and those 
drawn had to serve or find substitutes. Toward the close of the war the 
cost for a substitute was usually $1,000, for which the man who paid 
was able to obtain reimbursement later from the combined bounty fund 
offered by the State, the county and the towns. In the early part of the 
war the only bounty was $50, which gradually increased until the usual 
figure was $1,000. The consequent burden falling upon the tax- 
payers was onerous, the total amount raised for bounties alone and for 
other expenses in filling quotas by Franklin county and its then sixteen 
towns having been $500,106.08. The "other expenses" referred to 
consisted, in part at least, of the cost of sending committees to Virginia, 
where they enlisted soldiers who were receiving their discharge upon 
the expiration of one term of service, and had such recruits credited to 
the respective towns which the committees represented, so as to help fill 
quotas as against a pending draft. In many cases the men who enlisted 
as substitutes, or upon their own initiative for the sake of the bounty, 
had to be watched and guarded closely. Else some of them were likely 
to desert after having received the money, and flee to Canada, or to 
some other locality to repeat the procedure. These were known as 
"bounty jumpers." The cost locally for every volunteer or conscript 
from Franklin county during the civil war was about $200, while in 
1917 the county paid nothing, and the general government only about 
two dollars per capita. 

While the seven companies which Franklin county furnished for the 
98th regiment were being recruited the men were quartered as they 
enlisted in barracks built for them on the fair grounds, except that the 
officers' offices were in the old floral hall. An order issued by the adju- 
tant general made an allowance of 30 cents per day per man for sub- 
sistence. Sutlers sold food and other supplies on the grounds, which 
the men had to pay for themselves. The cantonment was denominated in 
orders " a branch military depot," and was named Camp Franklin. The 
original intention was that the 98th should be exclusively a Franklin 
county organization, but it was found practicable at the time to get 
together only enough men to constitute seven companies, which were 
consolidated with three from Wayne county to complete the outfit. A 
company was expected to muster a hundred strong, and each of those in 
the 98th regiment had close to that number ; but many others went out 
short of a full complement. The 98th was mustered into service Feb- 



504 History of Franklin County 

ruary 4, 1862, and left Malone for the South February 21st. As the 
men marched from quarters to the railroad station, windows and walks 
along the route were thronged with people waving handkerchiefs and 
flags, and crying approval and godspeed. As the train pulled out there 
were rousing cheers, and it was noted that tears were coursing the 
cheeks of those who had relatives or other dear ones in the command. 

In many cases, not only with respect to the 98th, but also in other 
commands, the townsmen or townswomen of an officer presented him 
with his sash and sword, and war work by those remaining at home was 
prosecuted earnestly and zealously, though doubtless not nearly as well 
systematized as like effort in the present. The women formed their 
local circles under the United States sanitary commission, and scraped 
lint from old linen for use in dressing wounds. They also made black- 
berry brandy for administering to those suffering with bowel troubles, 
and jellies and other delicacies for the sick. At holiday times men and 
women collected in neighborhoods large quantities of supplies to be sent 
both to local barracks and to troops that had taken the field. As a 
single illustration, 25 barrels of poultry and home cookery were for- 
warded to the South in 1864 at one shipment by a single Malone 
district in order to give the soldiers a Thanksgiving treat. 

At one of the earliest of the war meetings a fund of $10,000 was 
pledged by individuals for the relief and care of the families of those 
who should volunteer, and the amount was afterward increased from 
time to time. There was no regulation then providing for the reser- 
vation of a part of a soldier's pay for the use and benefit of his depend- 
ents at home, and that pay was only $13 a month in depreciated currency. 
On the other hand, bounties were paid, which is not the case now. We 
are contributing as individuals in 1917 and 1918 large amounts for 
various war purposes — for a company fund for our first organization in 
the field, for the work of the Young Men's Christian Association and 
of the Knights of Columbus, for remembrances to the men in the 
service, for the Eed Cross and for other causes — but similar offerings 
were made during the civil war also, though of course very much 
smaller because our people w r ere fewer and poorer, while in contrast 
with the procedure of half a century ago we are now paying scarcely 
anything for the cause through distinctively local taxation. True, the 
difference in the methods of the two periods is that under the one 
everybody had to contribute proportionately to a tax whether willing or 
unwilling, and under the other of voluntary contributions the mean and 
sordid escape altogether. As to federal taxation, while the amount now 



M ALONE 505 

levied is vastly greater, I doubt if the scheme of it touches as many 
articles of general use, or hits as large a proportion of people of ordi- 
nary means, as did the revenue measures of 1861 to 1865. In any case, 
the present will have to be a very long war if the money burdens that 
it lays upon our county shall come to total a half million dollars plus 
what our fathers contributed voluntarily as individuals. 

Neither occupation nor dependency served to exempt a drafted man 
during the civil war. Except as to the draft of 1863, he had to serve 
when drawn if within the limits of twenty to forty-five years of age, 
and if physically fit, or procure a substitute. The existing scheme of 
selective conscription is theoretically perfect, in that it reaches with 
discrimination the idler and the industrious, and without discriminating 
between the rich and the poor, and exempts under proper proof those 
who can be more useful in the home fields or shops than in the trenches 
or along the battle front. Moreover, the men who were drafted during 
the civil war and accepted service because of it did not have quite the 
standing with their neighbors and with the public generally as the 
volunteers, while now the status of the one is practically on an equality 
with that of the other. The reproach which attached to the conscript 
in the civil war is altogether absent under the existing plan. 

There were, too, during the civil war the prototypes of to-daVs 
pacifists and pro-Germans in the "copperhead," and of the " slackers "' 
in the men who sneaked into Canada to escape the drafts, and who were 
called "' skedaddlers." 

War Peices 

Prices soared during the civil war, particularly for cottons, sugar 
and coffee, but it is doubted if articles of food or household supplies 
generally averaged as high then as now, and emphatically so if it be 
remembered in the reckoning to consider that in the former time we 
bought with depreciated dollars, worth at times less than half as much 
as gold. Almost anything passed commonly as currency — postage 
stamps, metal tokens issued by mercantile or manufacturing concerns 
for cents, paper promises to pay that were put out similarly, and 
federal treasury notes in fractional parts of a dollar; five, ten, twenty- 
five and fifty cents in nominal value, which were called " shinplasters." 
The tokens and most of the commercial promises to pay were never 
redeemed, and even of the government issues millions of dollars were 
lost or destroyed, or are still outstanding as curios. But however 
prices may compare in figures for the two periods, those of the civil 
war time were, I think, the more grievous and crushing, because the 



506 History of Franklin County 

people were poorer and had long been accustomed to very low values. 
A family expense book for the year ending April 1, 1861, is before me 
as I write, and shows the whole cost of living for husband, wife and 
one child for the twelve months to have been $286.27. The expendi- 
tures included clothing, attendance occasionally at an entertainment, 
taxes and apparently every item of the cost of living with the exception 
of house rent. Some of the outgo was for coffee at 10c. per pound, 
rice at 6c, butter at 13c, cheese at three pounds for a quarter, beef in 
lots of 10 to 30 pounds at from 4c to 8c, sugar at 9c, a hog at 6c per 
pound, and berries at 5c per quart. To bound from such a basis to 
the war prices that followed was naturally vexing, and, with tastes less 
luxurious and means smaller than have since become the rule, strict 
economy, not to say pinching and scrimping, was practiced. People 
simply denied themselves utterly many things the purchase of which 
they deemed an extravagance, or used substitutes. I remember in par- 
ticular that in many families peas, beans and corn were roasted and 
used for coffee, either alone or in admixture with the genuine article ; 
and maple sugar, then salable at only about half the price of the cane 
product, served not uncommonly for tea or coffee sweetening, as well as 
in general cookery. It is also of interest to note that the coffee habit 
has grown greatly in half a century, for page after page in the ledger 
of a firm of Malone merchants covering the civil war period fails to 
show a single charge to farmers for coffee, and even the accounts of 
the wealthiest village customers include items for it but rarely. Other 
economies practiced were that every household that was at all fore- 
handed always had its own barrel of corned beef and salt pork, and its 
kit or keg of salmon and mackerel ; bought beef by the quarter, side or 
" critter,", and a half or whole pig in early winter for fresh meat 
instead of running to a market daily ; and many men, instead of buying 
their clothes ready-made or having them made to order, would pur- 
chase cloth, get it cut at a tailor's, and have it made by the womenfolk 
at home or by a seamstress whose charge would be not more than a 
third or a half of a tailor's. 

From an old-time local merchant's ledger, together with a table of 
prices quoted in a newspaper, I am able to fix values that were current 
for a few articles during the war of 1812 ; those which ruled in 1863, 
1864 and 1865 I have sifted from the ledger of a leading mercantile 
house in Malone during the period; and the figures in effect in the 
closing weeks of 1917 are those given me by a merchant now in trade 
as those that the stores generally asked at retail, and some of which 
are considerablv higher in 1918. In the 1863-5 column of the table 



Malone 507 

that follows of course the range covers both various qualities and price 
fluctuations during three years. The quotations given for fresh beef, 
pork, veal, ham, turkey, hay, wood, corn, cornmeal and potatoes in the 
civil war time are the prices that one of the proprietors paid to cus- 
tomers and charged to himself— the concern not having dealt gen- 
erally in those commodities. The table follows: 

1814 Civil War 1917 

Calico, yard 62f5 @ 750 19^ @ Ate 150 

Muslin, yard 37^0 @ 750. .. . 100 @ 500 

Cotton, yard 600 @ 72i 250 @ 63|0 200 

Gingham, yard 500 280 @ 37^0. .. . 180 @ 200 

Cambric, yard . . 880 @ $1.50... 56|0 230 @ 250 

Wood cord of 128 feet $2 @ $4 $10 @ $12 

Ham (whole) pound . 200 140 @ 220 300 @ 350 

Fresh pork (whole pig), pound 100 234 @ 240 

Veal by the quarter, pound 100 @ 12^0. ... 280 

Native beef by the quarter, pound 90 100 @ 120 - 

Turkey pound 12 j£ [ '..'... .'/. 400 @ 450 

Salt pork, barrel $25 @ $30 $52 @ $53 

Butter, pound 170 @ 220 200 @ 470 450 @ 500 

Sugar, pound 170 @ 200 150 @ 350 100 

Tea, pound $1.23 @ $2.85. . $1.50 @ $2 . . . . 400 

Coffee, pound 400 @ 750 184 @ 400 

Starch pound 12J0@190.... 100 

Flour, barrel $7 @ $14 $13 

Potatoes, bushel 400 @ 630 $1.20 @ $1.50 

Eggs, dozen. 200 12^0 @ 200. .. . 600 @ 650 

Corn meal, 100 pounds $2 $4 35 

Corn bushel $1.42 '.'.'.'. 87^0 @ $1.13 .' '. $2^43 

Oats, bushel 580 45^ @ 75^ 9( y 

gay, ton $8 $8® $13 $22 

Brooms, each 250 @ 500 800 @ 850 

Axes, each $L50 @ $ L75 . , $L25 

Nails, pound 60 @ 90 5^0 @ U 

Kerosene, gallon 75^ @ $1 25 ... 13^ 

In the Malone merchants' book from which the civil war quotations 
are gleaned I find no charge for salt pork during the war, but am 
authentically informed that in 1864 or 1865 the price reached $45 per 
barrel in Chicago, which was the record price until a few weeks ago 
sales were made in that same market at wholesale at over $50 per 
barrel. Butter sold at retail in Malone in the closing months of the 
war, or shortly afterward, at 50c. per pound, and in 1867 and 1868 
starch brought 25c. per pound, and corn meal $2.50 per hundred 
pounds. The high price for flour was soon after the close of the war, 
$18 per barrel, but it did not stay at that figure long. So, too, some 
values have been greater since the present war began than they were in 
December, 1917 — particularly for potatoes, which sold a few months 
earlier at $3 per bushel, and even in November, 1917, at wholesale for 



508 History of Franklin County 

a day or two at $1.50 per bushel. Dressed hogs, whole, commanded 
25c. per pound at one time, and flour $18 per barrel. 

Some of the present high prices have a legitimate cause, particularly 
in the case of cotton, for which war demands are prodigious. Every 
discharge of a twelve-inch gun consumes half a bale of cotton, and a 
machine gun in action uses a bale every three minutes. Absorbent 
cotton for staunching and binding wounds call for 20,000 bales a year; 
one change of apparel for the present United States army alone requires 
more than a million bales ; another million bales go annually into 
explosives; and 100,000 bales will be needed to equip the aeroplane 
fleet if, as seems probable, linen shall come to be unobtainable. 

During the civil war the national debt ran up to more than three 
billions of dollars, but, so far as I know, no one was importuned per- 
sonally, or otherwise except by circularizing or newspaper advertising, 
to buy bonds. By express terms all of these bonds were redeemable in 
gold, but were marketed in exchange for depreciated paper currency. 
Some of them bore interest at as high a rate as seven and three-tenths 
per cent. 

Confederate Baids Apprehended at Malone 

In the afternoon of October 19, 1864, each of the three banks in St. 
Albans, Vt., was entered by two or three strangers, who, presenting 
revolvers at the heads of clerks and officers, proceeded to 'loot the 
institutions, securing about $150,000 in money. They were con- 
federates who had come into the place from Canada, and who stated 
afterward that they had been sent North by General Early to engage 
in such exploits. They forced the bank officials to take an oath of 
allegiance to the confederate government, and to swear that they would 
divulge nothing of what was transpiring until two hours should have 
elapsed. The affair caused a tremendous sensation all along the 
northern border, and, apprehensive that a similar raid might be under- 
taken upon Malone, two companies of home guards were quickly 
recruited here — one of infantry and one of cavalry. The leading men 
of the community enrolled in the organizations, and rendered active, 
serious service. The cavalry had Charles Durkee for captain, and 
Chas. C. Whittelsey for first and William H. Barney for second lieu- 
tenant. The infantry had over a hundred members, with Joel J. 
Seaver as captain, Charles W. Breed as first and Martin Callaghan as 
second lieutenant. Both organizations were armed by the government 
notwithstanding none of the members was regularly enlisted. The old 
fire-engine house, then on a lot near the Wead Library, was fitted up 



Malone 509 

with bunks, and served as military headquarters. A detail of the 
infantry was on duty every night for about two months — a part of 
the force patrolling the streets and picketing the village outskirts until 
midnight or later, with relief at an agreed hour by the contingent who 
had been sleeping in the engine house, which the relieved men then 
occupied until morning. 

In January, 1865, Newton H. Davis, who had seen service in the 
98th regiment, recruited a company of cavalry here under government 
sanction for frontier defense, and the Durkee and Seaver commands 
were thereupon disbanded, and their arms surrendered. The company 
of Captain Davis was supplied with horses by a Massachusetts com- 
pany that was stationed at Champlain. It was quartered in Malone, a 
part of the time in King's Hall and a part on the fair grounds, for 
about three months, and the remainder of its time in service at Camp 
Wheeler near Ogdensburg. When President Lincoln was shot this 
company scouted along the border from Malone to Rouses Point, not 
always careful to keep south of the Canadian boundary, in search of the 
conspirators. The company was mustered out in June, 1865. 

In addition to these three local organizations, a company from Ver- 
mont and another from Massachusetts, both composed of veterans whom 
wounds or sickness had incapacitated for service at the front, were on 
duty in Malone for a few months in 1865. One of these companies bad 
quarters in the barracks on the fair grounds, and the other in the large 
Parker or Pounds house on the flat in which the deaf-mute school 
found accommodations at one time, and which is now a tenement. 

ISTo confederate movement upon Malone was ever made, and the 
several organizations had only routine services to render. Their 
existence and presence contributed to relieve the apprehension of the 
civilian population, and created a sense of security locally. 

The war with Spain in 1898 affected Malone hardly at all, and the 
town had no appreciable part in it save to send a score or more of its 
young men to the army. These got no nearer Cuba titan South Caro- 
lina, and thus were never in battle danger. Their failure to enter more 
actively into the war, however, was due in no degree to themselves, 
and it was as patriotic a service that they gave as though greateT hard- 
ship and greater hazard had been experienced. 

Malone's Part in the Present War 

The declaration by Congress in April, 1017, of a state of war with 
Germany had a response in public sentiment strikingly unlike that 



510 History of Franklin County 

attending any other war in which the United States ever engaged. 
There has been no flash of popular wrath or passion — which is not at 
all to imply that our people are not in earnest and full approval of it, 
nor that a cold, resolute determination to " see it through " is lacking. 
The only real impatience rests upon the wish that matters might be 
made to move more swiftly, and that our sluggard indifference to 
military preparation years ago caused for a time discomfort and a 
menace to the health of the men who are in training. 

Malone's part in the struggle has not been inconsiderable, nor in 
any respect wanting in honorable and useful endeavor; but the record 
of the town is so interwoven with that of other towns, and carries so 
many independent and individual operations, that the story of it can 
not to be told separately, connectedly and completely. Our military 
organization, known as Company K of the first regiment of the national 
guard, was promptly recruited to a strength of 150 men (not all of 
them from Malone), which was nearly twice its normal peace average; 
and weeks before the government was ready to receive it had waited in 
impatience for the call to service duty. It left Malone August 15, 
1917, and, except for a short stay in the vicinity of New York city, 
went into training at Spartanburg, South Carolina. Unfortunately 
the best interests of the service were thought to require the dismember- 
ment of the company in order that by transfer of most of its men 
another command (the famous old Seventh of New York, -now the 
107th U. S. Inf.) might be brought up to the regimental strength that 
is deemed standard; and only Captain Marshall and a handful of his 
men were left to preserve the identity of the unit, which has since been 
recruited to its former numbers from the conscription camps. The 
men are waiting and learning,* with their friends and townsmen con- 
fident that upon arrival " somewhere in France" they will acquit them- 
selves with honor, and make a record of valorous and efficient service. 

Of those comprising the first conscription Malone furnished fifty, 
and has since added largely to that number. Besides, it has a nice 
representation from its very best element of young manhood who have 
taken their courses in officers' training camps, and are now in com- 
mission with rank ranging from second lieutenant to major. 

In contrast with army conditions during the civil war, the differences 
are striking in many particulars. The volunteers and those drafted 
are paid $30 per month each as against $13 allotted from 1861 to 
1865. Instead of being rushed at once, raw and inexperienced, to the 



They have gone to France since this was written. 



Malone 511 

battle line, both volunteers and conscripts go into camps for months of 
seasoning, drill and thorough practical instruction in the new methods 
of warfare; and absolute prohibition of places for the sale of alcoholic 
liquors and of brothels or bawdy houses in or near such camps, under 
severe penalties, is embodied in the law. Nor may liquor be sold to a 
man in uniform anywhere. Measures to make camp conditions sanitary 
are had which would have been impossible a half a century ago, because 
they were then all unknown to medical science; and the aim is con- 
stantly in view to keep the men not only physically clean, but morally 
so also. Still, lack of previous military preparation is about as seri- 
ously felt now as it was at the beginning of the civil war, and arms, 
munitions and clothing have been lamentably short of requirements. 

As against deprivation of the bounty benefits in the civil war, the 
government is not only granting larger pay, but makes generous pro- 
vision for the relief of needy families of its soldiers, and writes insur- 
ance at low rates in sums of from one thousand to ten thousand dollars 
for each of the men who may be prostrated by disease, or crippled or 
killed — the initial appropriations for which aggregate $176,500,000. 
Soldiers with dependent wives or children are not permitted to draw 
in excess of half their pay, and must allot the other moiety to depend- 
ents. To such allotment the government is pledged to add and pay to 
dependents amounts monthly ranging from $5 up to $50. In addition, 
there are to be pensions for the disabled or for the survivors of the 
killed. It thus appears that, upon the whole, the soldiers of 1917 fare 
rather better as regards remuneration and provision in the event of 
calamity than those who fought the civil war; and surely the scheme 
of the present law is saner. 

Of Malone's home efforts while its sons are in the field it is writ 
large that those whose lot is simply to work and wait are doing 
their best, whole heartedly, and almost to the last man, woman and 
child. Weeks of time and labor have been given along manv lines by 
many individuals cheerfully and without compensation. A home 
defense organization took a military census, prepared a registration of 
those liable for military service, instituted and prosecuted a campaign 
for increased agricultural production and for the conservation of food, 
and arranged for and held public meetings at which addresses were 
made for the fostering of patriotic interest and endeavor. Canvasses 
for funds for almost innumerable purposes in connection with the war 
have been successfully carried through. These include large subscrip- 
tions for Liberty Bonds as an investment, and outright giving for a 



512 History of Franklin County 

company fund for Company K, for the Young Woman's Christian 
Association, for the Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbns joint fund, 
for the Salvation Army, for Bed Cross membership and for Eed Cross 
artivities in all parts of the world. All of this has been pushed with 
vigor and with a response most creditable. The moneys given outright 
reach well up into tens of thousands of dollars, and the Liberty Bond 
purchases close to a million. The Franklin County Chapter of the Eed 
Cross has nearly nine thousand members, inclusive of duplications, and 
of these more than half are residents of Malone. Twice weekly a 
hundred or more of these members in Malone assemble and work 
together in the preparation of surgical dressings, in the knitting of 
sweaters and socks, and in making comfort bags and other articles for 
field and hospital uses. Additionally, hundreds of individual women 
are knitting and sewing in their spare hours at home. The chapter and 
the Knights of Columbus together have raised funds considerably in 
excess of forty thousand dollars for the purchase of yarns and other 
materials, and are drawing upon them unstintedly. A single purchase 
of yarn by the local Eed Cross chapter in 1917 called for $3,000. and 
nine sewing machines operated by electric motors are kept humming 
in the workrooms. 

When with the federalizing' of the national guard it became the 
policy of the State to establish home defense companies and also a 
body of troops to be known as the State guard, Malone formed a com- 
pany of each sort; and at a special meeting of the board of supervisors 
in June an appropriation of $7,500 was voted for arming and equipping 
the Malone home defense organization and others of the same character 
that were recruited in Bangor, Chateaugay, Saranac Take, St. Begis 
Palls and Tnpper Lake. The Malone unit had about 100 members, 
and for several months met weekly for drill. Jay O. Ballard was its 
captain, Arthur E. McClary first lieutenant, and Y. B. Eoby second 
lieutenant. Uniforms were purchased, but before arms had been pro- 
cured the State authorities determined that interest and effort lie con- 
centrated upon the State guard organizations, and that the home 
defense companies go out of existence. Accordingly the Malone com- 
pany was disbanded ; but those elsewhere in the county except in 
Bangor volunteering for the State guard were mustered into that body. 
Of the $7,500 appropriated about $3,400 had not been expended, and 
it is expected that the State will reimburse the county for the $4,100 
paicl out for uniforms 

Malone's comnanv of the State ffuard has eisrhtv-odd members. John 



Malone 513 

W. Genaway is captain, Daniel W. Flack first lieutenant, and Frank S. 
Steenberge second lieutenant. It has been provided with rifles and 
uniforms. With similar companies at Chatcaugay, Saranac Lake, St. 
Regis Falls, Tuppcr Lake, Plattsburgh and Ogdensburg it comprises a 
battalion. 

ADDENDUM 

One of the fiercest electric storms ever known in this section, accom- 
panied by a high wind, swept over the eastern part of St. Lawrence 
county and through Franklin about to the east line of the town of 
Malone on the evening of August 7, 1918. There was hail also, with 
some of the stones of prodigious size. Probably no other as destructive 
storm covering so considerable a territory has ever been known in the 
county with the exception of the Chateaugay tornado of 1856. Its track 
was eight or ten miles wide at some points, and while individual losses 
were generally slight the aggregate of destruction was considerable. 
Few buildings, or none at all, other than barns and silos, were wrecked, 
but of these the number destroyed was large ; and crop losses were 
heavy — in hop gardens the poles having been blown down and the arms 
of the vines broken or badly whipped, and orchards and fields of grain 
and corn having suffered severely. In the village of Malone the great- 
est destruction was of shade trees. Trees of from a foot to three feet 
and over in diameter were snapped off near the ground or uprooted by 
the hundreds, and giant limbs were wrenched off. In a number of 
instances the trees or limbs fell upon dwellings, which were partly 
wrecked, and nearly every street was blocked to traffic by fallen trees 
which spanned the roadways. A few buildings in the village were 
stripped of their tin roofing. Electric light and telephone wires every- 
where were broken, and streets, places of business and residences were 
in darkness without exception until the lines could be repaired. One 
marvels in considering the evidences everywhere apparent of the force 
and fury of the wind that no substantial structures were demolished. 

17 



CHAPTER XIX 
MOIRA 

Moira was erected from Dickinson April 15, 18.28, and consists of a 
single township. At the date of its erection there were but few inhabit- 
ants in all of the other seven townships to the south of it, comprising 
the remainder of Dickinson, and it would thus seem to have been 
entitled fairly to assume the parental name had the people so chosen, 
but the township had been designated as Moira (for the Earl of Moira, 
in Ireland), and the new town was so called. 

The first settlers were Appleton Foote and Benjamin Seeley, who 
came from Middlebury, Vermont, in 1803. The former was the resi- 
dent land agent of the then owners of the township, viz., Eobert Gil- 
christ and Theodoras Fowler, who afterward disposed of their hold- 
ings to Luther Bradish, Eobert Watts and Peter Kean. Jonathan Law- 
rence and Joseph Plumb came the same year with Foote and Seeley, 
but did not bring their families until 1804. Samuel Foster, Isaiah and 
Rufus Tilden, Jason Pierce, Captain Thomas Spencer and David Bates 
came at about the same time, or a year or two later. Mr. Foote and 
Mr. Seeley did not remain long, the former removing to Malone. Mr. 
Seeley and Mr. Plumb removed to Bangor, and Mr. Foster to Dickin- 
son, Mr. Seeley locating a little later in Malone. Mr. Foster succeeded 
Mr. Foote for a time as agent for the proprietors. Philip Kearney, 
father of the one-armed general of the same name, as gallant an officer 
as ever lived and the idol of his men until he was killed in 1862, also 
represented the owners at one time, and lived in the town. Upon Mr. 
Kearney's removal Jonathan Lawrence became the agent, and with his 
son, Hon. Sidney Lawrence, sold most of the Gilchrist and Fowler 
lands that were disposed of to actual settlers, and thus contributed most 
to bringing new blood and additional people into the town. In a word, 
Moira was long a Lawrence town, this family having had a larger part 
than any other in the town's development, and having made the greatest 
impress upon it. Jonathan Lawrence had been a revolutionary soldier, 
and took an active part in preparing for the defense of Franklin 
county against a possible British invasion in 1812. He conducted the 
first hotel after Benjamin Seeley in Moira, held many town offices, and 

[514] 



Moira 515 

always took an active and useful part in all of the general affairs of the 
community. He died in 1851 at the ripe age of ninety years. 

Eufus Tilden became prominent in business, and was a militia 
captain in active service in the war of 1812, with higher rank after 
peace was restored. Captain Spencer was a man of forceful character, 
and removed to the west in middle age. 

Settlement was slow until about the time of the war of 1812, and 
even as late as 1830 the whole number of people in the town was barely 
eight hundred. Thirty years later the number had more than doubled, 
and in 1875 the population reached its maximum, 2,512. Since then 
it has fluctuated, but not more than a hundred or two either way 
between census periods, the number reported by the enumeration of 
1915 being 2,413, of which one-half or more are in the two hamlets 
Moira and Brushton. The enumeration of the former, treating the 
electric light district as coequal with the hamlet, gave it four hundred 
inhabitants, while Brushton claims to have at least twice that number. 
But if the latter be the larger, Moira may perhaps be reconciled by the 
fact that a grand jury inquiry in 1859 established that it had imported 
by rail during the year 1858 nearly two hundred barrels of whiskey 
while Brushton had received in the same way during the same time 
only sixty-two barrels. 

Agriculturally Moira is one of the good towns of the county, and 
used to be called the very best for corn, though it is told that the crop 
having failed there in one year some of the people had to go over into 
Bangor for their supply, and that thus a section of Moira came to be 
called Canaan, while the part of Bangor which relieved their wants has 
since been known as Egypt. 

The first school house was built in 1807 near the present hamlet of 
Moira. Provision for the support of the common schools w r as one of 
the first acts of the town after its erection, and always since has been 
generous. Interest in educational matters has continuously been 
marked, and both Moira and Brushton have high schools of exceptional 
excellence and superior facilities considering the size of the places. 
Both do work of an academic grade, have fine school buildings and are 
at pains to have a high class of teachers — of whom there are nine 
employed at Brushton and five at Moira. 

The Northern Railroad (afterward known for many years as the 
Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Bailroad, and now as the Ogdens- 
burg division of the Rutland Railroad) passes through the town near 
its center. It was completed in 1850, and has a station at Moira and 
another at Brushton, which was formerly called Brush's Mills. The 



516 History of Franklin County 

improved shipping facilities thus afforded gave a decided impetus to 
the business of the town and to its growth in population, so that the 
latter increased thirty-four per cent, in the ensuing ten years. In 
1883 the undertaking of lumbering operations in Waverly and Santa 
Clara upon a scale never before known in the East led to the con- 
struction of the Northern Adirondack Eailroad from Moira to St. 
Eegis Falls, with extension afterward to Santa Clara, Brandon or 
Buck Mountain and Tupper Lake, and in 1889 to the building of a 
railroad by Ernest G. Beynolds of Bombay, in association with the 
Central Vermont Eailroad, north from Moira to Bombay, where it 
made a connection with the Grand Trunk system. The latter propo- 
sition proved to be very unprofitable, and was wholly abandoned and 
the rails taken up in 1896. Still later, when the Northern Adirondack 
Eailroad and its extensions had been acquired by New York Central 
interests, a new line, bearing west and north from Moira, was built to 
and across the St. Lawrence river at a point just west of St. Eegis, and 
carried thence to Ottawa. 

Orrin Lawrence, a son of Jonathan, was sheriff of the county in 
1830. Clark Lawrence, also son of Jonathan, and father of Clark J., 
</ f Malone, was the town's first real merchant, an innkeeper, and 
ior thirty years postmaster. With his brother, Orrin, he commenced 
in 1824 the erection of the "Tavern House" on the corner now 
occupied by Enright, and took over the property alone in 1829. 
He operated also for a number of years one of the most important 
asheries in the county. Darius W. Lawrence (son of Orrin) and Clark 
J. Lawrence were prosperous merchants for many years, making more 
money there than they ever made afterward in Malone. The former 
was active and influential for a long period in local Democratic politics. 
He was elected to the Assembly in 1851 and 1852, and the respect in 
which he was held and the wide popularity which he enjoyed caused 
him, even against his inclination, to be drafted many times in after 
years as a candidate for one or another county office in times when the 
Democracy was particularly anxious to poll a heavy vote. Clark J. 
Lawrence, though as pronounced as any member of the family in his 
political preferences and faith, never cared for the activities of politics, 
and never sought public office. In business enterprises his part has 
been large and varied, and no one has enjoyed a higher reputation for 
acumen and soundness of judgment and integrity. He and Darius W. 
removed to Malone in 1867, three or four years after the organization 
of the Farmers National Bank, to become associated in its manage- 



Moika 517 

ment. Further reference to them will be found in the chapter of 
biographical sketches. 

Sidney Lawrence was a justice of the peace continuously for more 
than half a century, supervisor and assessor a number of times, sur- 
rogate of the county from 1837 to 1843, State Senator in 1843 and 
1844, member of Assembly in 1846, and representative in Congress in 
1847 and 1848. He was an intimate friend of Silas Wright, who more 
than once urged him to be a candidate for Governor. My inference 
from references to him found in local newspaper files between 1840 
and 1855 is that he was not especially interested or initially active in 
the minutiae of politics or in manipulating nominations, but that 
managers and candidates had to make their peace with him when it 
came to a question of the principles or policies for which they were to 
stand in a campaign. Pilgrimages to Moira for this purpose appear to 
have been usual almost every year, and it was not often that a candidate 
failed upon such an occasion to give in his adherence to " the Moira 
platform." To Mr. Lawrence certainly they all did claim to stand 
upon it, or else they failed to command his support; and it is to his 
credit that he counted principle higher than mere success. At times 
shifty candidates were understood to have professed in Moira a faith 
which they disavowed in Chateaugay, Fort Covington and elsewhere. 
But they all had to " knuckle " to Judge Lawrence in one way or 
another if they hoped to win. Had he so chosen he might undoubtedly 
have continued in office, but he became disgusted with political methods, 
and absorbed in business affairs, in which he accumulated a consider- 
able fortune. He was for a number of years president of the National 
Bank of Malone. 

It has been my privilege recently to examine an account book kept 
by Clark Lawrence as postmaster at Moira for a part of the terms that 
he served in that office. Starting in 1840, it runs to 1847, and appar- 
ently about every person who sent or received mail at Moira in this 
entire period is charged for postage thereon. In one of these years a 
hundred and thirty-three persons had such accounts — some of them 
for single separate items at various dates, and others with larger cor- 
respondence having a continued running account for perhaps three or 
four months between settlements. The rate of postage then was deter- 
minable by the number of sheets or pieces of paper contained in a 
letter and also by the distance that it was carried. The postage was 
payable at the office of origin or of destination at the option of the 
sender. Thus I find in this book one letter from California charged 



518 History of Franklin County 

at twenty-seven cents, a number from nearer points in the West and in 
the South at twenty-five cents each, Vermont letters at twelve and a 
half cents each, other New England letters, as well as those from 
Albany, New York and Washington, at eighteen and three-quarters 
cents each, those to or from Clinton or St. Lawrence county, and Duane, 
Fort Covington, Franklin and Hogansburgh, at ten cents each, while 
to and from Bangor, Malone and Chateaugay the rate was six cents. 
On one letter to Washington the postage was fifty-six cents, so that it 
must have consisted of three separate sheets or pieces. In 1845 rates 
were reduced; Boston, New York and the West and South to ten cents, 
and to all places in Northern New York and Vermont to five cents. 
To England and Ireland it was twelve cents. Luther Bradish, Henry 
N. Brush, Robert Watts and Sidney Lawrence (the latter a brother of 
the postmaster) had the most frequent charges, and the largest in 
amount. The latter's account continued without a payment for several 
years, and totaled about sixty-two dollars. Of course the postmaster 
must have had to report and remit to Washington at stated times, 
while his collections evidently had to wait upon the pleasure or con- 
venience of the patrons of the office. It is improbable that many other 
postmasters of that time had the accommodating spirit or possessed the 
means thus to advance the funds for the postage bills of the customers 
of their offices generally, so that it is not presumable that Mr. Law- 
rence's practice in this regard was usual. But even as an exceptional 
case it is so radically at variance with modern methods, and would be 
so utterly impossible in the present, that it possesses a unique interest, 
and is illuminative of old conditions. 

Luther Bradish came to Moira from New York in 1826, and quickly 
became an important figure in the life of the town and county. He 
continued to reside there for about fifteen years, and loomed large. A 
sketch of his life is given in another chapter. 

Henry N. Brush located at Brush's Mills (now Brushton) in 1835. 
He was a man of finished education, an engaging public speaker, and 
a man of strong parts. He disputed primacy in the town with Sidney 
Lawrence, and if less prominent it was in part at least because he was 
a Whig, while the town was strongly Democratic. His holdings of 
land were large, and the business and industrial development of the 
eastern part of Moira were due largely to his activities. He died in 
1872. 

As the men of Moira who have been prominent in politics and in 
business pass in mind — the Stevenses, the Petits, the Dickinsons, the 



Moira .519 

Farnsworths, the Mannings, the Burnhams, the Rnssells, the Perrys, 
the Bucklands, the Harrises, the Bowens, Mr. Dewey, and too many 
others even to mention — one is impressed that in point of native 
ability and good citizenship the quality of Moira's people has averaged 
high. But further detailed individual sketches are impracticable 
within the limits assigned to this chapter, except that it must be added 
that the town has been especially fortunate in having had always an 
exceptionally fine class of physicians — men of skill and character, 
whose mere presence in a stricken home carried hope and reassurance, 
and whose sympathetic kindness and interest bound their patients to 
them in affectionate regard. Among these were Dana H. Stevens, who 
was also the county's first superintendent of common schools in 1843; 
Frederick Petit, the first school commissioner in the second district in 
1850, and who died in the army in 1863 ; and also Luther A. Burn- 
ham and Elisha A. Rust. Though lacking the education and special 
training which these enjoyed, Samuel Barnum must be included in the 
list. He was a follower of the Thompsonian school, whose teachings 
were against the use of mineral medicaments, and whose disciples held 
that the tendency of vegetation being to spring up from the earth, 
therefore vegetable remedies upheld man from the grave. More simply,. 
Mr. Barnum was an herb doctor. Nominally his home was at Moira, 
but his habit was to tramp from place to place through Vermont and 
Northern New York, and at one time at least he was absent from Moira 
for years. Like the famed Johnny Appleseed, he had a passion for 
planting — only he ran to the herbs used by him in treating the sick 
instead of to apple trees, and all through this section he set out mint, 
tansy and carroway. There were far fewer physicians, both actually 
and relatively, in his day than there are now, and in his humble way he 
was useful. 

The industrial enterprises of Moira were never numerous or large. 
The community is distinctively agricultural, but with two small unin- 
corporated villages — Brushton and Moira. Each is a station on the 
Rutland Railroad, and each is on an improved trunk-line highway. 
Almost with the first settlement in the town, Appleton Foote, as the 
agent of Gilchrist and Fowler, erected a saw mill at what is now 
Brushton, and a grist mill there in the year following, which was dis- 
placed by the present stone mill in 1823, built by Robert Watts, and 
later improved and enlarged by Henry N. Brusb. Latterly it was 
operated by Irving Peck, but has been acquired recently by Neilson 
Brush. The saw mill Avas rebuilt by Mr. Brush, but went into disuse 



520 Histoey of Franklin County 

and was torn down long ago. Mr. Brush had also a second saw mill 
in the northwestern part of the town. Another saw mill, north of 
Brushton, was built by Phillips and Bowen, and owned later by B. F. 
Harris, and then by B. C. Martin and C. A. Arnold, after which it 
became J. S. Hill's chair factory, and is now owned and operated as a 
steam mill by Conger Brothers. J. S. Hill and Julius Tryon built a 
small saw mill in 1871 south and west of Brushton, ran it for seven 
years, and then dismantled it. Asahel Green also has a steam saw mill 
near Brushton, and both he and Conger Brothers are sawing hard timber 
almost exclusively. S. Farnsworth formerly had a carding mill north 
of Brushton, and the place has also had four tanneries and a dis- 
tillery. The earliest of the tanneries were one built prior to 1835 by 
Merritt Crandall for Bobert Watts, and another, probably still earlier, 
on the road leading south from the railroad crossing just west of 
Brushton, on the Stevens brook, by Samuel Stevens. This was a 
small and primitive affair, with the bark mill run by horse power, the 
horse hitched to a sweep or beam connected to a revolving post, and 
the horse traveling continuously in a circle. The vats were simply 
holes dug in the ground, and walled up with plank so as to be water- 
tight. The skins or hides were pat into the vats, usually in the 
autumn, which were then banked over with earth. In some cases the 
contents remained in the vats for a year or longer. Mr. Stevens used 
to tell that at the time he began operations there were only three 
families (Lawrence, Bradish and Watts) who killed their own beeves, 
and that the first year of his operation of the tannery he had only 
three hides to tan. He afterward turned out all kinds of leather, from 
that used in harnesses and in soleing boots to fine stuff for women's 
shoes, and also sheepskins with the wool on, which farmers formerly 
used so commonly as wagon cushions. Mr. Stevens died in 1885, but 
long before that the tannery had disappeared. Another tannery, built 
by Henry N". Brush, was afterward owned by D. W. Lawrence and 
Martin Busbnell. Webster Brothers of Malone operated it forty-odd 
years ago. It was burned during their occupancy, rebuilt by them, and 
again burned. A fourth tannery, on practically the lines of that built 
by Mr. Stevens, was located north of Moira Corners, and was run by 
Mason Wilcox, who afterward lived on the Duane road south of Malone 
village. The distillery was a Brush enterprise, with Bichard Tryon 
and James Pickering in charge, but, of course, it has long been out of 
existence. B. F. Harris engaged thirty years or more ago extensively 
in the manufacture of sash, doors and trim at Brushton, but his estab- 



Moira 521 

lishment was burned, and not rebuilt. Until corn drove the potato 
product out of the market there were several starch factories. The 
first of these, and one of the first in the county, was built in 1851, and 
operated by Colonel Christopher A. Stone, from Plattsburgh, and 
Captain William R. Tuppcr, from Burlington, Yt. Its foundation 
walls are still to be seen at the Farrington brook just west of Brushton, 
at the point that used to be called Tupperville. Colonel Stone removed 
to Geneseo, 111., and Captain Tupper located at Chateaugay Lake, 
where he ran a small steamboat for a number of years. At a later date 
D. W. and C. J. Lawrence had two starch factories, one in the northern 
part of the town, just south of South Bombay, and the other in the 
western section ; and Dexter B. Lewis, and then George Farrington, 
ran the Stone-Tupper mill. D. D. D. Dewey was also a manufacturer 
of starch at one time. Forty years ago and more A. C. Slater & Son 
had a saw mill northwest of Moira, and D. D. D. Dewey and N. C. 
Bowen had a steam saw mill and planing mill at Moira, which was 
destroyed by fire; and in the years when the large lumber output at 
St. Begis Falls, Santa Clara and Brandon (now Bay Pond) all had to 
find outlet via Moira a planing mill at the latter place, operated first by 
Patrick A. Ducey, later by William W. Wheeler, and still later by Wm. 
S. Lawrence, did a considerable business, but is now idle. John J. 
Tomb had a carding and spinning mill as early as 1828, and is under- 
stood to have been induced to undertake the business there by Philip 
Kearney, who was active in persuading skilled artisans to establish 
themselves in the town. 

0. H. P. Fancher, who is said to have been the father of the Rarey 
system of horse training, operated a brickyard near the Farrington 
brook for a few years after 1877. Before coming to Brushton he was 
said to have been tied to a stake three times by Indians, and fire 
kindled for the torture. 

The modern tendency to consolidation and the competition created 
by condensaries and milk shipping stations have operated in Moira, as 
everywhere else, to diminish the number of creameries. One south of 
Moira Corners, owned by Edward Barnett, has become a skimming 
station for a creamery at Alburgh, and another, north of Moira (built 
by George Elwood on the site of one owned by W. J. Congdon, that was 
burned) is now owned by F. L. Richards, and is similarly used in con- 
nection with the latter's creamery at Brushton. Four creameries are 
now in operation, viz. : Stiles & Erwin's, west of Moira Corners ; F. L. 
Richards's at Brushton; James O'Connor's, north of Moira; and Clay- 



522 History of Franklin County 

ton Tryon's, also north of Moira. Others that are now out of existence 
include one owned by J. H. Griffin in the Wangum district; one that 
used to be in the old Methodist church building, burned, and which 
was run by George Whitman and Melburn Demo; and A. C. Slater's 
and H. F. Keeler's. The Borden Condensed Milk Co.'s milk shipping 
station at Brushton manufactures cheese whenever the demand for 
milk in New York city is not equal to the supply, and there is also a 
shipping station at Moira, owned by the Levy Dairy Co. Besides the 
many thousands of pounds of milk which these two concerns send to 
the metropolis by the regular milk train, large quantities of cream go 
from the town daily by express to New England points. 

Sanatoria are many in this day, here and elsewhere, but it will 
doubtless surprise all except the oldest readers that there was announce- 
ment fifty-odd years ago of the opening of one near Brushton by Dr. 
H. G. Parker. The advertisement indicated a really pretentious estab- 
lishment, called a retreat for the afflicted, located at the farm of 
Coomer Brown, control of which Parker had acquired; and it empha- 
sized that there were two medicinal springs in the vicinity — one of 
which was, perhaps, the Brush spring, while conjecture suggests that 
the second may have been the sulphur spring in Westville. Dr. Parker 
advertised to be in attendance personally at Brushton three days in 
each week, one day at Dundee, Que., and the remainder of the time at 
Cote St. George, and to cure consumption, asthma, heart disease, 
cancer, rheumatism and other ailments. I understand that the sana- 
torium had few patients, if any at all, so that it did no one any good, 
nor any one except Mr. Brown any harm. Parker was a negro or 
mulatto. 

A chalybeate spring was discovered at Brushton by Henry N. Brush 
through having stepped into it and afterward observing that his boot 
was covered with iron rust. The spring was walled in, and for years 
its waters were used by many visitors for its curative properties. It 
was believed to be beneficial in cases of scrofula, erysipelas and nervous 
ailments. Latterly it has been little frequented, though occasionally 
people in the vicinity still drive there, and take the water home. It 
will not bear long keeping, however, as when bottled a sediment forms, 
and the curative properties are lost. A curious feature in connection 
with it is that hardly more than a step from it is a spring that flows 
perfectly pure water, without even a trace of any mineral impregnation. 

An agricultural society was formed in 1872, and held annual exhi- 
bitions for seven years. The grounds were south of the railroad station 



MontA 523 

at Brushton, aud included a race track. The address in 1875 was by 
"Brick" Ponieroy, and in 1876 by Theodore Tilton. Both lashed the 
farmers unmercifully for their lack of business methods and for failure 
to cultivate their lands intelligently and scientifically. The enterprise 
did not prove a success financially, and no fairs were held after 1878. 

Two murders have been committed in Moira. On January 10, 1839, 
while Oliver Pierce and his son, William, were at work in the woods, 
an altercation arose between them over the son's request to be permitted 
to take a horse to drive to an entertainment in the evening. Upon 
denial of his request the son became sullen, and failed to obey directions 
given by the father concerning the work, whereupon the father struck 
him in chastisement. In a paroxysm of rage the son then buried the 
blade of his axe in the father's breast, and death ensued after a day or 
two. The son was convicted of murder in the first degree, and was 
sentenced to be hung; but Governor Seward visited him in the jail at 
Malone, and afterward commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, 
which was subsequently modified to imprisonment for forty-nine years, 
four months and six days. The term expired in December, 1888, but 
Pierce had become insane, and upon his release was turned over to 
Superintendent of the Poor Henry A. Miller, who had him transferred 
to the Willard Asylum at Ovid, where he died. 

In the evening of May 28, 1903, J. E. Brady, a respected and popu- 
lar merchant at Brushton, closed his store at the usual hour, and started 
for home on his bicycle. He was assaulted, and his skull crushed, 
though he was able after regaining consciousness to make his way 
alone to his residence. A part of a sum of money that was known to 
have been on his person when he left the store was missing upon his 
arrival at his home. He died from his injuries June 13th. Local 
opinion to some extent held that the murder was the work of local char- 
acters, but Mr. Steenberge, who was sheriff at the time, and dug into 
the matter as deeply as possible, believes that the assailants were 
tramps. 

A fire at Moira May 9, 1900, burned the stores of A. L. Sayles, 
J. P. Crandall and J. H. Enright, and Dodge & Burnap's meat market. 
The losses aggregated $30,000. 

W. W. W. Belknapp founded and for a few years published the North 
Star at Brushton. He was burned out in 1884. Charles H. Smith 
established the Brushton Facts and Fallacies in 1899, and still con- 
tinues the publication. Mr. Belknapp re-entered the newspaper busi- 
ness as publisher of the Brushtonian, which was continued for only a 



524 History of Franklin County 

few months — Mr. Smith buying it and consolidating it with Facts and 
Fallacies. Moira also had a newspaper, called the Northern Adirondack, 
for a short time in 1887. It was started by W. E. Clark, and was pub- 
lished later by V. L. Clark and W. E. Pratt. 

The First National Bank of Brushton, a well managed and prosper- 
ing institution, commenced business January 24, 1910, with a capital 
of $25,000. Its resources in September, 1917, aggregated $286,533.76, 
and it had accumulated in less than eight years a surplus of $20,659.55. 
Its deposits amounted at the same date to $216,159.21. Its deposits 
more than doubled in the two years from 1915, and its resources 
increased in the same time by $109,000. 

As already stated, the first hotels in the town were those of Appleton 
Eoote at Brushton and of Benjamin Seeley and Jonathan Lawrence at 
Moira. But these were hardly public houses, inasmuch as they were 
only the homes of the gentlemen named thrown open to accommodate 
and entertain the few who sought a meal or lodging. Then followed the 
really public inn of Clark Lawrence at Moira, which Mr. Lawrence him- 
self kept until about 1840. From that date until the house burned in 
1883 it changed ownership a number of times, and had many landlords, 
among whom were Wilbur Austin, A. Green Pierce, Horace Salisbury, 
Ambrose Hosford, Julius Pierce, George W. Dustin, Thomas Murray, 
James Humphrey, Stillman Burnap and Henry Clark. It was during 
the latter's occupancy that the building burned, and Mr. Clark then 
bought a house near the Adirondack Eailroad which he converted into 
a hotel under the name "Adirondack." Not proving profitable, it was 
abandoned as a hotel and made into a tenement, but in 1915 (the town 
having voted in favor of license) it became a hotel again under the 
ownership of Edwin Eoss, and with A. H. Plumadore as its landlord. 
The Eailroad Hotel, as it was known fifty or sixty years ago, and after- 
ward as the Franklin House, is now Hackett's Tavern. It was built 
about 1850 or 1851, and, as its original name implied, is near the 
station. It has had as landlords Eansom Harrington, John E. Covey, 
Oscar Bhipps, William W. Shedd, McKenzie Payne, Thomas Murray 
and others. William Hackett bought the property thirty years ago or 
more, has greatly enlarged and improved it, and manages the house him- 
self. George Prespare recently acquired a saloon building near the rail- 
road station, made it over into a hotel, and conducted it under the name 
Moira House. Yet another hotel at Moira, built by W. S. Lawrence 
in recent years, is modern in construction and fine in its appointments, 
but has been vacant for several years. It is too good a property for 



Moira 525 

promiscuous renting, and yet is not salable at its value be< ause of the 
uncertainty of obtaining a license for the sale of liquor. Seventy years 
ago or more Bradford Smith kept a hotel about a mile east from Moira 
Corners, near the Julius Tryon (now Albion Drake) place. He com- 
mitted suicide by hanging. Lieut-Gov. Bradish boarded there about 
1840. 

The date of the opening of the first hotel at Brushton after that of 
Mr. Foote I have been unable to ascertain definitely, but it was running 
at least as early as 1846. It was a two-story frame structure on the site 
of the present Brushton House, and the building had been the dwelling 
house of Bobert Watts, and afterward of Henry 1ST. Brush. When the 
latter moved to a new home on the east side of the river, it was con- 
verted into a hotel. Aaron Peck kept it in 1852, and among its other 
landlords have been S. H. Lyon, Ira Marks, James Humphrey, James 
Lawrence, Steven Gile, J. J. Mattheson, Woods Brothers, A. E. Barnett, 
Joel 0. Allen, Jr., and Merchant 0. Phelps, the present owner and 
manager. It was burned in 1877 during one of the terms when Mr. 
Gile occupied it, and again in 1911 under Mr. Allen's ownership. It 
was rebuilt the last time, in 1914, by a stock company, which sold to 
Mr. Phelps.* Mr. Lawrence's occupancy had some memorable inci- 
dents, in connection with one Salisbury, which give interest to the 
statement that his son, Henry, is now the proprietor of the best hotel 
in Indianapolis, Ind., is a director in one of the largest banks in that 
city, and is rated as worth a million dollars. Friends and associates 
of the writer in his younger years who may chance to read this sketch 
would deem it strange if special mention were not made of " Steve's " 
management here, which made it one of the best country inns any- 
where. Mrs. Gile was a famous cook, and both husband and wife were 
hospitable and kind. Dance suppers were always fine, and so tempting 
was the table generally that private parties from Malone and other 
places frequently drove there for broiled chicken and other appetizing 
fare. When the number was large enough a dance usually followed 
the supper. The Giles finally removed to the woods, and have now 
departed life. A son, known as " Hight," was an officer in the 98th 
regiment during the civil war, and as a young man was something of 
a high roller. " Hight's " final years were passed as a cook on a ranch 
in Arizona, where he was widely known as " Old Dad," and was popu- 
lar. He was killed twenty years ago or so in attempting to board a 
moving train at Flagstaff. 



This hotel was burned July 3, 1918, with an estimated loss of $20,000. 



526 History of Franklin County 

Another hotel at Brushton, called the Commercial House, but more 
often referred to now as the " brown hotel," was built by A. Green 
Pierce in 1870 on the opposite side of the street from the Brushton 
House. It had not been quite completed when it was destroyed by 
fire, which was supposed to have originated by spontaneous combustion 
of painters' rags. It was at once rebuilt, partly by donations of timber 
and labor by the people of the vicinity, and was burned again in Sep- 
tember, 1884 — the guests barely escaping with their lives. Mr. Pierce, 
W. W. W. Belknapp, Tom Jellico, C. H: Freeman, Steven Gile, J. L. Fish 
and others were its landlords. The building was owned when it burned 
the second time by Delong and Stearns, and occupied by Mr. Gile. The 
same fire destroyed also Belknapp's printing office, the " novelty bazar," 
and E. A. Whitney's barn and residence. The hotel was not rebuilt. 

Early merchants at Moira, besides Clark Lawrence, were Captain 
Rufus Tilden, Sidney and Orrin Lawrence, D. W. & C. J. Lawrence, 
Warren L. Manning (afterward at Fort Covington, and then at 
Malone), Ira Russell and Baker and Dana Stevens; and somewhat later 
M. V. B. Meeker, D. D. D. Dewey, Clark & Crandall, L. J. Dickinson, 
Horace M. Stevens, Wm. E. Dawson and A. L. Sayles. The place now 
has six or eight mercantile establishments, all in the immediate vicinity 
of the Corners with the exception of the wholesale and retail house of 
C. W. Brush, which is near the railroad station. Clark Lawrence's day 
book as merchant from 1829 to 1840 is interesting. Not a few items 
in it are for whiskey, sold to men who were pillars in society and in the 
church. In that day practically all merchants sold liquor as a matter 
of course, and no one thought either the traffic or the drinking wrong. 
Even clergymen used liquor commonly, and not infrequently to the 
extent that they became "mellow." Moreover, everybody who can 
remember back to those times is pretty sure to include in his remarks 
concerning them the reflection that though liquor was so cheap and 
so commonly used, it did not seem to induce disorder and riotous con- 
duct as it does now. One particularly suggestive item in Mr. Law- 
rence's day book is a charge which couples " one quart of whiskey and 
lour fishhooks," so that the " bait " peculiar to the sport of angling has 
been deemed essential from a very early time. Lieutenant-Governors 
would doubtless enjoy procuring butter at the price that Luther Bradish 
paid in 1829, when it cost him ten cents per pound, or eggs at about 
the same figure per dozen. 

Early traders at Brushton included Henry 1ST. Brush, V. Parsons Hill, 
James Farnsworth, Case, B. F. Whipple, and John S. Hill. 






Moral 527 

Charles Durkee was there for a few months sixty-odd years ago as man- 
ager of a store opened by Edwin L. Meigs of M alone. While Mr. 
Brush's name appears in the list I am informed that he engaged in 
trade for a short time only, and less for profit than to accommodate the 
little community, so that residents might be spared the expense and 
inconvenience of having to go elsewhere to satisfy their small require- 
ments. Now Brushton has eighteen or twenty stores of one kind or 
another, or just about the same number that there were dwelling houses 
there sixty years ago. 

At Moira there are a Congregational and Methodist Episcopal church, 
and at Brushton one each of the Methodist Episcopal, the Christian, 
the Boman Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal. 

The Congregational dates from 1823, when Bev. Beuben Armstrong, 
representing the Berkshire and Columbia Society, and Bev. John 
Kennan visited Moira, held a meeting at the residence of Thomas 
Oakes, and formed the church with nine members, viz., Thomas Beals 
and wife, Thomas Oakes and wife, Simeon Harwood and wife, Bachel 
Stickney, Abigail Spencer and one other unknown, who " entered into 
covenant with each other, and were pronounced a church." So far as 
the clerk's records show, preaching during the next four years occurred 
only about once in six months. The membership in 1915 numbered 
about twenty-eight, and forty years previously was twice as large. 
Decrease in the number continued steadily from 1915, and in 1917 the 
organization held what it was thought would be its last service, and was 
deemed practically extinct. The church enrolled with the Presbytery 
of Champlain in 1827, but withdrew in 1866 to affiliate with the St. 
Lawrence Association. For a number of years following organization 
the school house was used as a house of worship ; the church edifice was 
erected in 1844, and was dedicated in 1845 by Bev. Ashbel Parmelee. 
It was remodeled in 1871. An examination of the church records dis- 
closes conditions very like to those told in the story of Dickinson con- 
cerning the Free Will Baptist church. A standing committee was 
appointed early in the life of the society to inquire of all members who 
should become delinquent the reasons for such delinquencies, and to 
have temporal watch and care over the brethren. In one case in 1829 
a complaint was made against both Mr. and Mrs. Beals. The committee 
reported that they had been visited more than once, and told of their 
fault, but " they did not hear me/' and " I now tell it to the church." 
As learned from a source other than the record, their offense consisted 
in having walked one Sunday afternoon from their home to a neigh- 



528 History of Franklin County '^Z" 

bor's to see a panther or " painter " that the latter had killed on Satur- 
day, leaving it on exhibition in his door yard until Monday, when it 
was to be skinned and presented to the authorities for the bounty then 
payable on those animals. Mr. and Mrs. Beals having refused to con- 
fess that they had done wrong and declined to express penitence, the 
church, after many hearings and admonitions, excommunicated them. 
Complaint was made against John Tomb for a number of offenses, one 
of which was the "manifestation of greater anxiety for his temporal 
prosperity than for the prosperity of Zion," and another "neglect of 
prayer." He also was heard many times, and finally excommunicated. 
Another member was rejected for instability and " inconsistency of 
practice in running after other denominations, especially the Chris- 
tians," and for neglect of family prayer. Still another, who applied 
for a letter of recommendation in view of a contemplated union with 
the Free Will Baptists, and who had been immersed, was refused ; and 
yet another was suspended because it was shown that she had been 
re-baptized. 

The first conference appointment of a resident minister to the Meth- 
odist Episcopal church was in 1850, and the next year the society was 
reported as having one hundred and thirty-eight members. Of course 
these could not all have been gained in a single year, but must have been 
mostly the fruits of labors when the place was served by circuit riders, 
which Hurd's history of Clinton and Franklin counties says were begun 
there in 1831, at which date Moira was in the Malone circuit, but was 
transferred to the Bangor circuit in 1835. Thus the locality would 
appear to have had services with more or less regularity for nearly 
twenty years prior to becoming an independent charge; and I have 
before me an account of a camp meeting held in the town in 1833 or 
1834, written by a man who was present. Bev. Jesse Peck was one 
of the preachers, and the number in attendance was large. Meetings 
of this character have been held in Moira probably more often than in 
any other town in the county. Years ago they were held on the Irving 
Peck farm in the western part of the town, and also at a point between 
Moira and Brushton. In more recent times, and until 1914, when the 
camp-meeting custom was abandoned, they were held in the medicinal 
spring grove at Brushton, where were erected stables, a preachers' 
stand, fifteen private cottages and a dining hall, with a large tent in 
which to hold the services. Several of these buildings have been torn 
down, though some still remain. The pastor informs me that the pres- 
ent church building at Moira was finished in 1869, and dedicated in 



Moira 529 

1870, and that at Brnshton in 18T4, though it looks much older. The 
members of the Moira charge number one hundred and twenty-one, and 
of Brushton one hundred and one. A single pastor serves both. 

Hough's history, which was published in 1852 and is reliable, states 
that a Christian church was organized by James Spooner in Moira in 
1816, and that the next year it had seA r enteen members. It adds that 
" in connection with the Methodists they have a church at Moira vil- 
lage." This edifice stood on the site of the present Methodist church, 
and the description in a deed to other premises, as recorded in the 
county clerk's office, refers to the lot as having been marked and con- 
veyed by Jonathan Lawrence. The date of this other deed is 1833, 
which is the nearest I can come to the time of the church's erection. 
In a letter to the Palladium in 1870 Warren L. Manning stated that it 
was the first built in the county. No deed to the church lot is on 
record, but a copy of a lease of it by Mr. Lawrence for " as long as the 
same shall be used for the purposes of a church " is on file in the office 
of the town clerk. It was executed to the trustees of the Methodist 
Episcopal church and to the trustees of the Christian church in 1845, 
and the consideration was one dollar. Though the lease denotes that the 
church was of the " union " order, the fact is that it was used 
exclusively by the Methodists for a long time previous to the building 
of the present church, and came to be known as the Methodist church. 
When the new building was erected the old one was moved to a site a 
few rods east of the " Corners ", and after a time was converted into 
a creamery. It burned a few years ago. 

Mr. Spooner, the organizer of the Christian church, came from New 
Hampshire, and though only a common laborer found time and asserted 
the force to establish two churches in the county. The Christian church 
was removed to Brushton probably about 1849. Its records are very 
incomplete, but it is known to have held its meetings in the school house 
at Brushton until it erected a church building of its own in 1869. For 
sixty years or more it has maintained a resident pastor, who sometimes 
officiated at East Dickinson also, and it continues to be an active 
organization. 

St. Mary's Church at Brushton was a part of the Malone parish until 
1850, when it became an independent charge. The first mass here was said 
in the " old red store," since burned, but which was on the main street, 
on the east bank of the river. There were then only thirty Catholic 
families in the district. In 1855 a church building was erected, and 
a parochial residence provided in 1870. Thirty years ago the church 
had three hundred and fifty families in membership, and, though Ban- 



530 History of Franklin County 

gor and West Bangor have since been set off from it, it nevertheless 
now has over four hundred families. For a time a few years ago it had 
a parochial school, but abandoned it because of lack of support. 

St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal church at Brushton was organized 
in 1867, largely through the efforts of Mrs. H. N. Brush, and a church 
building erected in 1869. For a part of the time since then it has been 
served by clergymen from Malone, though generally it has had, and 
now has, a resident rector. 

North Star Lodge, No. 107, F. and A. M., was organized at Law- 
rence April 8, 1846, removed to Moira January 31, 1855, and to Brush- 
ton February 9, 1887. It has a membership of ninety-two, and owns 
the building in which the lodge room is situated. The first floor of the 
building is unoccupied except as the town leases it for a polling place. 

Sidney Lawrence Lodge, No. 660, I. 0. 0. F., was formed February 
24, 1893, and has forty-three members. 

Brushton has a Grand Army post, organized in April, 1883, and its 
present membership numbers twenty-eight. Its title is H. L. Aldrich 
post No. 363. In a number of years reunions or camp fires of the vet- 
erans of the civil war were held in the chalybeate spring grove. 

Brushton Grange, No. 901, organized January 28, 1901, is in a flour- 
ishing condition, with three hundred and sixty members, and owner- 
ship of a substantial two-story building, the first floor of which is 
rented for commercial purposes. 

Moira Tent Knights of Maccabees, No. 425, was established at Moira 
in March, 1896. 



CHAPTER XX 
SANTA CLARA 

Santa Clara was erected from Brandon in 1888, the operations of 
John Hurd and business associates, of Patrick A. Ducey and partners, 
oi the Santa Clara Lumber Company and of Macfarlane & Eoss within 
the limits of the town having caused two small hamlets (Santa Clara 
and Brandon) to spring up, and also brought about the settlement at 
Everton, which, with the people in scattered localities and at Saranac 
Inn, made a population of close upon fifteen hundred, or twice that of 
all of the remaining portion of Brandon. Santa Clara originally 
included four townships, to which a half township, also from Brandon, 
was added m 1896, making an assessed acreage of 116 617 It is the 
second largest town in the county. The name was taken from the 
hamlet, which was a combination of the given name of Mrs. John Hurd 
and the Spanish word expressing Mr. Hurd's veneration for her 
character. 

One of the first settlers in the town, or perhaps squatter would be 
more accurately descriptive, was probably a man named Jennings, in 
the eastern part, at a point still known as the Jennings clearing. Whence 
and when he came or whither he went there is no record to show 
Indeed, the first now known occupant was Alvah Rice, who used to tell 
that the first night that he passed there a number of other persons (one 
of whom was a woman) occupied the cabin or shack with him The 
shelter consisted of a single room, and all slept on the floor During 
the night the woman gave birth to a child, probably the first born in 
the town. In 1837 Mr. Eice purchased from William H. Harison what 
came to be known as the Wait place (now Oneita), cut a road to it 

IZ ™ J6 ? mgS dearing ' and kept a hotel there - He was the father 
ot Mrs. Mordecai Ladd, at whose home in Duane he died Mrs Charles 
Selkirk, Mrs. Cassius Hoose and Eobert and Clinton Ladd are grand- 
children. Jason Baker followed Mr. Eice as landlord for four or five 
years beginning about 1852, when he sold to Calvin Waite, and Daniel 
McNeil (Mr. Waite's son-in-law) ran the house until 1870 and was 
then succeeded by Mr. Waite himself. Landlords here since Mr Waite 
have been James Cunningham, Fred Hazen, Henry Phelps, and now 
Albert Campbell. The Jennings place was occupied for a time durin- 

[531] 



532 History of Franklin County 

the civil war, by Christopher Crandall, the one-legged hunter and 
guide who was afterward so well known in Duane, and who blew out 
his brains, discharging the gun by pulling the trigger with his toe. 
Chapman Olmstead from Duane also lived there for a few years, and 
was frozen to death on a trip to the Waite place for provisions. He is 
buried in the Jennings clearing, where there are a number of other 
graves which local opinion holds are those of soldiers who camped there 
during the war of 1812 while on their way from Plattsburgh to Sacket 
Harbor. In the immediate vicinity a Mr. Millbanks of New York 
city now has a private park. In 1850 a Michael Jennings, one of Gerrit 
Smith's proteges, from New York city, had a place a few miles south 
of the Jennings clearing, and lived there for a time, but his date 
is too late and his location too far south for the clearing to have taken 
its name from him. 

In 1830 Jonah Sanford of Hopkinton and Mr. Harison entered into 
a contract by the terms of which the latter bound himself to deed the 
former one hundred acres of land at the falls of the St. Eegis river 
nearest to the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike (which were the 
upper falls) upon condition that Mr. Sanford erect a saw mill and a 
tavern at the point indicated, which afterward came to be known as 
Everton, and operate both for a period of five years. In 1836 the stipu- 
lated conveyance was executed, with recital that Mr. Sanford had ful- 
filled the conditions of the contract. I do not suppose that Mr. San- 
ford himself operated the mill or kept the tavern, but have no idea who 
represented him. The reason for the erection of the tavern was doubt- 
less that the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike had just been built, 
and it was expected that there would be a good deal of travel over it. 
Whether the mill continued to be run uninterruptedly from the time 
of its erection in 1830 or 1831 there is nothing to show, but it is cer- 
tain that Mr. Sanford retained ownership of the land until 1850, when 
he sold a quarter interest each to David Conger of Dickinson and Isaac 
Skinner of Brasher. In 1859 Mr. Sanford, Mr. Skinner and Benjamin 
Holmes, all of St. Lawrence county, built a new mill on the old San- 
ford site and operated it for a few years. Most of their output was 
hauled to Moira, but some of it went to St. Regis Falls for building the 
Hammond mill, and was drawn by M. A. Dustin, Jr., and his son, 
George W. At this date there could have been no hotel at the mill, for 
the proprietors boarded with Mr. Dustin at his tavern. During the 
Sanford-Skinner-Holmes regime an iron mine just across the river 
from the saw mill was opened, and the ore drawn to the Skinner iron 



Santa Clara 533 

works at Brasher. After they closed down the mill it was run by Daniel 
McNeil, and then Peter Young used it for making shingles. 

In 1844 Louis Humphrey from Stockholm built a saw mill at what 
is now Santa Clara, but which was known for forty years as Humphrey's 
Landing, and operated it for more than twenty years. Lorenzo Cheney, 
afterward at St. Regis Falls, lived near Humphrey's, and " Old Bill " 
Edwards, a noted hunter and trapper, lived a mile west. It is 
a curious fact, considering the name that the place now bears, that 
when Mr. Humphrey went west, about 1868, he located at Santa Clara, 
Wisconsin. 

Upper Saeanac 

At Saranac Inn, or Upper Saranac as it is sometimes called, there 
is no business except that of the State fish hatchery and that of the 
hotel, which was erected about 1859 or 1860 by James S. Hough, who 
sold in 1870 to Christopher F. Xorton of Plattsburgh, during whose 
ownership it was managed by a Mr. Cox, a Mr. Van Xorman and John 
Strong. Ed. Derby bought from Xorton, and ran the house for a time, 
when it was sold to the Saranac Association in 1885, in whose control 
it remained for thirty years.* It is one of the most attractively located 
resorts in the wilderness, on high land at the head of Upper Saranac 
lake, and overlooking that water. There are sixteen fine cottages con- 
nected with the hotel, owned by the association, and a number more 
in the vicinity, on the shores of the lake, that are individually owned 
and occupied as summer camps. The hotel will accommodate about two 
hundred and fifty guests. It was preferred as a resort by Grover Cleveland 
to any other in the Adirondacks during his term as Governor and while 
he was President. It was also a favorite with Governor Hughes, though 
he was far from having been popular there. j- Perhaps a hundred people 
comprise the hotel force or reside near the place. Fifty years ago, when 
the voters here numbered hardly more than half a dozen, their polling 
place was at Brandon Center, distant by highway something like sev- 
enty miles. It is unnecessary to add that they were not accustomed to 
exercise the elective franchise except in a Presidential year, and not all 
of them always even then. About thirty-five years ago the locality was 
made a separate polling place. 



* The property changed ownership in 1916, and was enlarged and improved. 
Two stories were added, the dining room enlarged, and elevators installed. The 
capacity of the house was thus about doubled. 

t At the election in 1916 a number of Republicans there who had known 
Governor Hughes when he visited the place a few years previously utterly 
refused to vote for him for President because they disliked his austerity and 
what they called his picayune demeanor. 



534 History of Franklin County 

Brandon 

Twenty-odd years ago Brandon was a thriving little village, with a Cath- 
olic and a Protestant church, a pretentious hotel, a store or two, a large 
saw mill, and a considerable number of inexpensive dwelling houses, occu- 
pied for the most part by lumbermen and mill workers. Mr. Ducey, 
the head of the lumbering business, recognized from the first that the 
life of the place must end when he should finish cutting the merchant- 
able timber from his tract of thirty thousand acres of forest, which 
was going into lumber at the rate of a hundred and twenty-five thousand 
feet per day. Therefore, though he sold village lots at from twenty- 
five dollars to one hundred dollars apiece to such as insisted upon 
buying, his advice always to poor men who sought to purchase was 
against such investment, because their holdings must become practically 
valueless after a few years. The immediate locality was a pine barrens 
which had been ravaged by fire, and the land was impossible for" profit- 
able agriculture; nor was there scenery or water to make it attractive 
as a pleasure resort. Mr. Ducey arrived here about 1881 from Mus- 
kegon, Mich., where he had made a fortune as a lumberman, and after 
leaving Brandon became interested in large enterprises in Mexico and 
on the Pacific coast. He was a hustling and capable business man, 
generous and whole-hearted, straightforward and honest, and a loyal 
friend. His operations at Brandon paid out handsomely, and when his 
supply of soft timber was exhausted he sold his lands to Paul Smith 
and William Eockefeller of Standard Oil fame. Mr. Ducey died in 
Michigan. 

John Hurd and His Enterprises 

John Hurd was a very different type. Possessed of large properties 
at Bridgeport, Conn., a flouring mill at Indianapolis, Ind., and other 
business interests elsewhere, he became associated in 1881 or 1882 with 
a Mr. Hotchkiss, also of Connecticut, and Peter Macfarlane, a thorough 
lumberman from Michigan, in investment in timber lands to an aggre- 
gate of nearly sixty square miles in the western part of Franklin county, 
and subsequently in mills and a railroad. After a few years his partners 
were bought out by him. But mills a dozen to twenty miles from a 
railroad could not be profitable, and so Mr. Hurd, always optimistic 
and too often venturesome, proceeded, first, to build a railroad in 1883 
from Moira to St. Eegis Falls, a distance of twelve miles, and then to 
extend it to Santa Clara and Brandon, and afterward to Tupper Lake — 
a total length of nearly seventy miles. The road was finished to Bran- 



Santa Clara 535 

don in 1886, and to Tupper Lake in 1889. Tupper Lake was then 
almost uninhabited, and no other railway touched it or was near it 
Nor did Mr. Hurd want connection there with any other line, as he 
figured that without it he would have a monopoly of the haul' of the 
lumber product of the entire region. On the other hand, it was his 
intention to extend his own road eventually from Moira to the St Law- 
rence, and he expected also that it would do a large and profitable 
passenger business because affording an easy route into and out of the 
Adirondacks. For a long time the burden was carried by Mr. Hurd 
individually, though at a terrible cost in worry, interest charges and 
sacrifice of properties which he had to pledge as security for debts and 
loans. At length, as relief seemed to be assured through a bond issue 
which would have discharged all of his obligations and left him with 
a fortune of several hundred thousand dollars in cash, there was a fail- 
ure by the merest margin to float the bonds, and personal judgments 
and mortgages having piled up in a very large aggregate, a receiver 
was appointed for the railroad, and Mr. Hurd was bankrupt. He died a 
few years later in Connecticut, his immense mills having fallen into 
other hands, and the railroad having been acquired by New York Cen- 
tral interests. It has been extended from Moira to the Dominion 
capital, with the St. Lawrence bridged near Cornwall, and is now 
operated as the New York and Ottawa. 

But before disaster came Mr. Hurd had established large mills at 
St. Begis Falls, Santa Clara and Tupper Lake, and was also turning 
out great quantities of hemlock bark, cord wood for shipment to Mon* 
treal for fuel, and charcoal. He owned seventv-five thousand acres 
almost all virgin forest, and it is readily seen that his scheme of work- 
ing it must have stripped it practically bare if continued for a few years 
which would have been incalculably unfortunate for the country, however 
it might have worked out for Mr. Hurd himself. ' 

Santa Clara 
At Santa Clara there were the railroad machine shops and two mills, 
one with a capacity of only about twelve thousand feet per day, but the 
other turning out over a hundred thousand; and there was also a chair 
factory. 

Besides his other multitudinous activities, Mr. Hurd became associated 
about 1890 with former Governor Alonzo B. Cornell in experimenting 
for the lighting of railway passenger cars by electricity generated by 
revolution of the car wheels. Governor Cornell had been a telegraph 



536 History of Franklin County 

operator in his youth, and later study had made him a practical elec- 
trician. The experiments were prosecuted at Santa Clara with some 
degree of success. 

EVERTON 

Upon his withdrawal from the Hurd enterprises Mr. Macfarlane, 
with others, acquired sixteen thousand acres of timber lands in Santa 
Clara, Waverly and Duane, and built in 1886 a lumber railroad six 
miles in length from St. Eegis Falls to a point that they called Ever- 
ton — the same where Mr. Sanford had a mill in 1831, and San- 
ford, Skinner & Holmes one two or three years before the civil war, 
and a mile up the river from where Bobert Douglass, from Nor- 
folk, built a large circular, clapboard and shingle mill and store in 
1883. Mr. Douglass ran his mill only one season, and sold to 
Macfarlane, Boss & Stearns. This firm built a combined water and 
steam mill on the Sanford site, operated both it and the Douglass 
mill for two or three years, and then sold to Henry and David Patton 
of Albany, who at once incorporated as the Everton Lumber Company, 
which failed a few years later. The tract had then been pretty well 
stripped of merchantable timber, and no further business was done at 
Everton. The mills and houses have utterly disappeared, and even the 
streets are so grown up to briars and bushes as scarcely to be distin- 
guishable. The property is now owned by the Brooklyn Cooperage 
Company, and the railroad has been extended eight miles farther east, 
over the lands of Eeynolds Bros, in Brandon, from which the cooperage 
company has obtained large lots of hard-wood timber for its mills at 
St. Eegis Falls. But the hard wood there has now been mostly cut, and 
probably within a year or two the railroad will become useless except 
for old iron. 

Before, during and after the Douglass operations at Everton " Jerry " 
Sampson of Dickinson occupied the old Sanford mill house as a travel- 
ers' house and bar. 

Fires at Santa Clara 

At Santa Clara during the Hurd activities a considerable population 
gathered, but the number is now greatly diminished. The Hurd mills 
at this place were taken over and operated by the Brooklyn Cooperage 
Company until November, 1903, when a fire destroyed a storage shed 
containing large quantities of staves and a number of houses, involving 
a loss estimated at fifty thousand dollars. The mills were thereupon 
dismantled, the machinery of one of them removed to Tupper Lake by 



Santa Clara 537 

the Santa Clara Lumber Company, and the other to St. Regis Falls. 
In 1915 another fire swept away the railway machine shops, and these 
will not be rebuilt. Still another fire in 1915 burned two hotels. There 
thus remain practically no industries for the employment of men, and 
the place is not likely to have any future importance or growth. There 
are still a couple of stores, two churches or chapels and one hotel at 
Santa Clara. The population of the entire town, which exceeded two 
thousand in 1890, had decreased to 675 in 1915. 

New Lumbering Methods 

Until Mr. Ducey, Mr. Macfarlane and the others came from Michi- 
gan, lumbering operations throughout this section had been on only a 
modest, scale. Old methods had been employed, and a mill with a 
capacity of three or four million feet of lumber annually was deemed 
large. When it was reported that these men were to build a railroad 
principally for hauling their lumber product, old lumbermen in this 
section treated the matter with scornful incredulity, believing that the 
business would not justify the expenditure. But the new comers 
brought western methods with them, built mills of a size and perfection 
of equipment that amazed resident operators, introduced the practice 
of sawing instead of chopping the standing timber, and drove business 
with an energy and scope that had never been dreamed of locally. 

Almost Deserted Hamlets 

At Brandon as well as at Everton business enterprises and resi- 
dential occupation are wholly of the past, and the former village has 
only a single small family as inhabitants. The mill, the hotel, the 
stores, the dwelling houses, and even the church edifices that comprised 
the now deserted hamlet have all been torn down or burned with the 
exception of a single residence. Most of the demolition was at Mr. 
Rockefeller's expense, though the Catholic church building went to 
Santa Clara for the lumber that it contained, while the Protestant 
church was moved to Faust and is now the Presbyterian church at that 
place. 

The Rockefeller Private Park 

William Rockefeller began buying lands extensively in the town of 
Santa Clara in 1896, made a private park of them, and built a summer 
home at Bay Pond, three miles south of Brandon. He soon sold to his 
son, William G. Mr. Rockefeller's first investment there was in the 



538 History of Franklin County 

holdings of Patrick A. Ducey, amounting to about twenty-seven thou- 
sand acres, for which he paid fifty thousand dollars, and he has since 
made additional purchases until now he owns about seventy-two square 
miles, which include many streams and ponds, with game so well pro- 
tected that deer may be seen at almost any time on any part of the 
tract, and trout fishing at many points continues excellent. Improve- 
ments have been made from time to time at Bay Pond, where Mr. 
Eockefeller has his residence, though spending comparatively little time 
there himself. Members of his family, however, occupy the house 
through most of each summer season. The building (not as costly nor 
as large as many others of a similar character in the Adirondacks) is 
of wood, contains sixteen rooms, and the interior finish is in the nat- 
ural woods of the locality. In addition, there are a house for the family 
attendants, another of fifty rooms for the male employees, the railway 
station, and a number of barns, garages and other outbuildings, all of 
which are electrically lighted. The amount of Mr. Eockefeller's outlay 
here is not known, but, reckoning the price paid for lands, the cost of 
buildings and the expenditure in constructing and improving roads, 
beautifying the grounds, etc., must aggregate several hundred thousand 
dollars. 

Fifteen to eighteen years ago a contention that arose between Mr. 
Eockefeller and Oliver Lamora attracted not merely local, but almost 
country-wide interest. Because Mr. Eockefeller was a millionaire and 
Mr. Lamora poor, there was a widespread disposition to regard the case 
as one of oppression and persecution. Naturally, Mr. Eockefeller, 
having the purpose of game protection and of preservation of the forest 
from fires, did not want settlers on lands that were bounded on all sides 
by his private park, nor trespassing hunters and anglers within the 
park itself. Thus he proceeded to buy the holdings of every one who 
could be induced to sell, offering fair prices as measured either by cost 
to the settlers or by any other test of value to them. To Mr. Lamora he 
offered twelve hundred dollars for property that had probably cost not 
to exceed five hundred dollars. Mr. Lamora not only refused to sell, 
but persisted in trespassing upon Mr. Eockefeller's lands and poaching 
in his preserve. Suits were instituted and prosecuted, and an intensely 
bitter feeling developed on the part of Mr. Lamora, and also upon the 
part of most men in this section who had grown up in the understand- 
ing that the forests were free to whomsoever might desire to hunt or 
camp in them, and the streams open also for fishing. But I could never 
comprehend that Mr. Eockefeller's intention and efforts to enforce his 






Santa Clara 539 

indisputable legal rights in his own property merited censure ; and it 
seems impossible that a dispassionate consideration of the case could 
pronounce him at fault. After Oliver Lamora's death his son sold to 
Mr. Rockefeller for a thousand dollars the property for which the father 
had refused twelve hundred dollars. 

Mr. Rockefeller employs as fire guards, game protectors and as help 
about his residence an average of something like seventy-five men 
throughout the year. His policy tends to increase the supply of game 
and also to lessen the likelihood of forest fires. John Redwood, super- 
visor of the town, is Mr. Rockefeller's superintendent, and does his 
work efficiently and satisfactorily to his employer, as well as with a 
courtesy and considerateness which make him popular with the local 
public. 

Churches 

The Roman Catholic church at Brandon was incorporated in 1887, 
mainly through the activities of Rev. F. J. Ouellette of St. Regis Falls! 
and was known as the "Church of St. John the Evangelist, Buck 
Mountain." Because the parish had been divided, and the church 
building gone into disuse during the rectorship of Father J. E. Berard, 
the site was sold to Mr. Rockefeller in 1910 for forty dollars and obli- 
gation to fence the cemetery. The building was torn down for the 
lumber in it. The Protestant church at the same place was doubtless 
one of the Adirondack missions, as it does not appear ever to have been 
incorporated. .The date of the removal of the building to Faust was 
1901. 6 

The Church of Santa Clara, incorporated in July, 1905, with the 
bishop and vicar general of the diocese, Rev. Father Ferdinand 
Ouellette, pastor, and John Dresye and Paul Lemieux as lay trustees, 
is still maintained as a mission of St. Ann's of St. Regis Falls, with 
Rev. Father Brault usually officiating, though services are held very 
irregularly, if at all, during the winter. 

There is also an Episcopal mission at Santa Clara, attended of late 
by Rev. E. E. Hutchinson, of Brushton, but formerly by Rev. H. A. 
Barrett, of Malone. The building was erected during Mr. Hurd's 
activities, and largely through his instrumentality. 

While there is no other regular church organization in the town, the 
Adirondack Presbyterian mission provides for holding services at Santa 
Clara during the summer season and fosters the maintenance at the 
same place of a Christian Endeavor Society. The services of these are 



540 History of Franklin County 

held in the school house. John H. Gardner, a divinity student, was in 
charge during 1915. 

Vacation Home for Working Gerls 
As fine a benevolence as Stony "Wold in Franklin, and organized upon 
much the same lines, is the Vacation Home for Working Girls at Santa 
Clara, established and maintained by the Working Girls' Vacation 
Society, the principal office of which is in New York city, and which has 
similar rest resorts at seven other places. The society is the outgrowth 
of the practical sympathy and generous contributions in time and money 
of women of high social standing and of wealth, and is wholly supported 
by voluntary contributions. It was incorporated in 1885, is unsectarian 
in its work, and, as donations have permitted, has extended its field of 
operations year by year. The home at Santa Clara was opened in 1895, 
and was made possible by the gift of two buildings there by the late 
George E. Dodge, of New York, and Mrs. Dodge has since bequeathed 
ten thousand dollars to the endowment fund of this branch of the 
society's work. The donations to the Santa Clara institution in 1915 
amounted to over five thousand dollars, and girls who enjoyed the 
benefits of the home during that season contributed $180.50, or about 
one-twentieth of the cost of running the place. Such contributions, 
while not exacted, are not discouraged, as it is felt by the management 
that if the girls wish to pay and can afford to do so, they appreciate 
more the privilege enjoyed, besides helping to extend the benefits to 
others. " Hillcrest " was open for twenty weeks in 1915, and " Uplands " 
for thirteen weeks — fifty-eight girls having been cared for at the 
former, and sixty-five at the latter, for periods varying from four to 
twelve weeks each, " with great gain in weight and health." Almost all 
of them were from New York city, and none was admitted until after a 
medical examination had been had. Tuberculous patients are taken, 
but only those having the disease in its incipient stage. Of the whole 
number cared for, one hundred and one had been inmates in previous 
years, and twenty-two were there for the first time. The two houses 
have a capacity of fifty-eight inmates, and the number present at any 
one time averages about forty. The entire cost of maintaining the home 
here during the season of 1915 was about nine thousand dollars, of which 
$1,086.90 was for railroad tickets, and $1,163.18 for fuel, ice, medical 
supplies and provisions. The explanation of the item of railroad fares 
is that even the transportation cost of such of the patients as are unable 
to pay themselves is met by the society up to the amount of ten dollars 



Santa Claka 541 

each. A staff of six persons is in attendance at Santa Clara through the 
season, and consists of the following: Dr. Anna K. Davenport, resi- 
dent physician; Miss M. Bibble, assistant; Miss M. E. Walsh, nurse; 
Mrs. M. A. Bingham, matron or house mother; Miss Nellie Holmes 
Bingham, assistant; and Miss Jean Hamilton, domestic science teacher 
and instructor in the study of birds and wild flowers. Mrs. Bingham has 
been in charge at Santa Clara for fifteen years. The society has an 
endowment of about seventy thousand dollars, of which about forty 
thousand dollars was received in bequests and contributions during the 
year 1915. The part of this fund applicable particularly to Santa 
Clara's needs is about twenty thousand dollars. One hundred dollars 
makes a contributor a patron, twenty-five dollars a life member, and one 
dollar a member for one year. There are one hundred and twenty-two 
patrons, more than three times as many who are life members, and about 
two hundred yearly members, payments by many of whom are more 
than one dollar each. Mrs. William Herbert of New York is the presi- 
dent of the society, and Mrs. Thomas Denny one of the board of man- 
agers. The Santa Clara committee includes Mrs. John Jacob Astor, 
Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, Mrs. Walter Webb, Mrs. Lucius Wilmerding and 
Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram. Cifts to the work here need not be in money, 
and household goods and provisions would undoubtedly be gratefully 
received and advantageously used. The institution is unquestionably 
doing a grand work, and deserves support. To take more than a hundred 
poor girls, some of them sick and all of them worn almost to the break- 
ing point, out of the heat, impure air and the grind of department 
stores, factories and sweat shops and offices and give them opportunity 
to revel for at least a month in outdoor life in the cool of the mountains, 
where invigorating atmosphere, kind care and good food are afforded, is 
surely a fine philanthropy, and should appeal strongly to all who are 
better circumstanced. 

Facts and Conjectures About Military Occupancy 

Beferring to the prevalent local belief, noted on a preceding page, 
that there was military occupancy at two points in the town long ago, 
that belief rests upon the fact that traces of such occupancy have been 
found in the vicinity of Oneita (formerly Waite's) and also at the 
Jennings clearing, which lies six or seven miles to the east and south of 
the hamlet of Santa Clara. At Oneita in particular, when Arthur 
Phelps was proprietor, he ploughed up at different times parts of gun 
barrels, a bayonet or two, canteens, and also canister shot. This point 



542 History of Franklin County 

is on the Port Kent and Hopkinton turnpike, which had not been built 
at the time of the war of 1812 ; and the only plausible explanation of the 
existence of military relics there is that troops traversing the Northwest 
Bay road, which in this vicinity is three or four miles to the south, were 
quartered there simply because it is a good natural camping ground. 
The Jennings place is on the Northwest Bay road, which was cut through 
the forest as early as 1810, and which local tradition holds was built in 
part, or at least improved, by soldier labor. It is known positively that 
troops were moved in 1813 from Plattsburgh to Sacket Harbor, but 
the records of the war department at Washington fail to show by what 
route they proceeded. However, it does not seem at all improbable that 
it may have been by this highway, as it is known that there was con- 
stant apprehension that if the old military road from Plattsburgh to 
and through Ellenburgh and Chateaugay were followed there would be 
danger of attack by the enemy from Canada, for at some points this road 
ran near the border. Hopkinton is the western terminus of the North- 
west Bay road, and official and other records establish the fact that that 
hamlet was rather a center of activity in the war of 1812. Three regi- 
ments were there (one of them commanded by Zebulon Pike, for whom 
Pike's Peak in Colorado was named) in March, 1813, on their way from 
Plattsburgh to Sacket Harbor, and in November, 1814, four hundred 
dragoons passed through the place from French Mills, while during the 
winter of 1913-14 as many as a hundred sleighs arrived there in a 
single day, all loaded with military stores, bound for French Mills. 
With such activity at Hopkinton, the local tradition that bodies of 
troops wintered a few miles to the east, at Oneita, at the Jennings clear- 
ing, and at Sand Hill in the town of Waverly is not incredible, especially 
when we have tangible evidence of such occupancy in the discovery of 
arms, etc., at Oneita, and in the presence of ancient graves in the 
Jennings clearing. " Old Bill " Edwards, a former well known guide, 
used to tell that such occupancy was unquestionably a fact, and that at 
Sand Hill measles prevailed among the troops in a virulent form, 
resulting in a number of deaths. One story runs that the beginning of 
the graveyard at Santa Clara was with the interment of soldiers so 
dying, but is to be discredited, as a more trustworthy account makes 
Mrs. John Hurd the first person buried there. 

Another possible explanation of the presence of military relics in the 
town is that they may have been from the equipment of Sir John 
Johnston on his flight from the Mohawk through the Adirondacks to 
Canada in 1777, though this expedition is believed to have followed the 
valley of the Backet rather than that of the St. Eegis. 



Santa Clara 543 

Fatal Fires and Murders 

Santa Clara has not been without its tragedies. In 1887 Chas. 
LaKocque, Zip Murray and Chas. LaFleur, all of Moira, reported one 
day at Everton for work in the mill. They were assigned to quarters 
in a boarding house, which burned the night of their arrival, and all 
three perished in the flames. 

A few weeks later the store of W. J. Glassbrook at Brandon burned. 
Joseph Garrow, wife and two children occupied rooms overhead, and 
all were burned to death. 

October 16, 1905, Herbert Miller, formerly of Saranac Lake, shot his 
wife in the kitchen of the Saranac Inn with a rifle, literally blowing the 
top of her head off. He then attempted to shoot himself, and later to 
cut his throat, but bystanders interfered and prevented consummation 
of his purpose. Miller was a very decent and likable fellow when 
sober, but when in drink imagined all kinds of evil and was of a madly 
jealous disposition. Upon indictment he pleaded alcoholic insanity, but 
after the evidence was in withdrew the plea, and pleaded guilty to man- 
slaughter in the first degree. He was sentenced to imprisonment at 
Dannemora for sixteen years. 

At the home of Mrs. Charles McCaffrey, near Saranac Iun, on Novem- 
ber 30, 1905, George Carpenter killed Capitola Gilmett, crushing her 
skull with a hatchet, and nearly severing her head from the body. He 
then cut the throat of Henry McCaffrey, a boy of sixteen years of age, 
and committed suicide by shooting. Discovery of the crime was not 
made until two days later, and its particulars had of course to be con- 
structed wholly from circumstances. Miss Gilmett's room showed that 
a terrible struggle had taken place, and it was doubtless the fact that 
Carpenter had attempted to ravish her, and that then, fearful of dis- 
covery, had killed McCaffrey while he slept, and taken his own life. 
Carpenter was a nephew of Mrs. McCaffrey, for whom he had been 
working for a year. His home was at Bridport, Vt. Mrs. McCaffrey 
was absent for a day or two, and Carpenter had been left in charge of 
the place. 



CHAPTER XXI 
WAVERLY 

Waverly was erected from Dickinson in 1880, and then comprised six 
townships, or 146,466 assessed acres. By the forming of Altamont in 
1890 its area was reduced by almost exactly one-half, or to 77,254 acres 
as assessed — which, quality considered, is quite sufficient, as the land 
generally has little value after the removal of the timber. It is uneven, 
rocky, almost sterile in parts, and even where the soil is seemingly fairly 
good it is often cold, repaying cultivation but poorly, though affording 
reasonably good grazing. The entire south third of the town is included 
in the William Kockefeller private park or preserve; most of the middle 
third and a part of the north third are in the condition that extensive 
lumbering operations would naturally leave a wilderness tract; while 
two-thirds of the north third, or less than a quarter of the whole, is 
nearly all cleared and in cultivation, with a number of good farms, 
though mostly rough and rolling, so that it is not feasible to use 
machinery advantageously, and a good deal of hand work is required in 
planting, cultivating and harvesting the crops. Thin and acid in some 
localities, the land nevertheless produces good hay and most, kinds of 
grain, as well as potatoes as fine as are grown anywhere in the world — 
two prizes having been awarded to Waverly growers at the Cornell potato 
show in 1916. Though the seasons are sometimes too short for potatoes 
to ripen fully, that disadvantage is more than compensated if the product 
be marketed for seed, as the unripe potato sprouts quickest, and enables 
southern growers to produce earlier, when prices are highest. In the 
hope of affording suggestion for safeguarding the future, after the dis- 
appearance of the forest, H. E. O'Xeil has given local agricultural 
problems no little study, and from personal actual demonstration 
believes that the growing of potatoes for seed, which always commands 
a better price than for consumption, and stock raising along given lines 
can be made to yield handsome returns. Calves bought in midsummer, 
grazed on cheap lands until winter, then fed economically, grazed again 
the following summer, and finally grained for a few weeks have paid a 
hundred per cent, and more on the original investment — the inter- 
mediate care and cost having been trivial. Dairying on a large scale 
can not be expected to be prosecuted profitably, though affording 
promise of fair success in certain inclosed areas. With climatic and 

[544] 



AYayerly 545 

soil conditions such that lands are rarely too wet for working in the 
spring, and never crust or bake, while underlying moisture minimizes 
drouth effects, it is believed that with due enterprise and employment 
of intelligent methods farming in the northern part of the town could 
be brought to realize quite as much as is at present paid out for wages 
by the mills in the village. But even this could not be counted upon to 
])reserve the village itself in its present size, for with the exhaustion of 
the timber the mills must close, and there would remain no sufftcieni 
employment for the common labor which constitutes so large a part of 
the municipal population. 

Natural Resources axd Reforestation 

Apart from the soil the natural resources of Waverly consist almost 
altogether in its forests, of which the industries upon which the business 
activities in the village of St. Regis Falls depend- are destructive. The 
cooperage company is denuding large tracts of hard timber at a rapid 
rate, and the pulp mill consumes great quantities of the soft woods. Mani- 
festly this can not continue forever unless there be replacement other 
fiian that which Nature can supply, and with the forests gone, and 
three-quarters of the town's area practically worthless for agricultural 
purposes, the conclusion is inescapable that Waverly's then future would 
Ise precarious in the extreme. Consequently unless there be instituted 
and determinedly prosecuted a policy of reforestation, the mills must 
become idle in the course of a few years, and St. Regis Falls lose its 
prosperity and a large percentage of its population, regardless of how 
agriculture be developed. The alternative to such decay is of course 
a stupendous proposition, but men who are experienced and skilled in 
forestry insist that it is not only altogether feasible, but that it promises 
actual profit. A thousand young pine or spruce per acre are required to 
reforest a tract, and forty to forty-five years will be required for them 
to attain a growth which would fit them for merchantable uses. But 
foresters tell us that at the end of such period the harvest would have 
a money value which, reckoning every item of cost, including land and 
compounding the interest on the investment, would give a return of five 
per cent, to the operator. A generation or more is undeniably a long 
wait, but it is certainly preferable to hopeless barrenness and utter 
loss of lands, which, treated as suggested, might make an industry per- 
petual instead of short lived, with the tract worth incalculably more 
than it was even as virgin forest, because with the steadily decreasing 
timber area stumpage can not fail to gain in value. Besides all that, 

18 



546 History of Franklin County 

one needs but to visit the neighborhood of Wawbeek in Harrietstown, 
where there is a replanted forest fifteen to eighteen years old, to be 
delightedly impressed by the attractiveness of lands thus treated as com- 
pared with those that have been stripped and practically abandoned. The 
Brooklyn Cooperage Company is already putting out half a million young 
trees on lands owned by it in St. Lawrence county, and like action must 
be had in Waverly if there is to remain anything of consequence in the 
town besides a memory and its name. Everybody in the town who has 
its welfare at heart and possesses any denuded land unfit for cultivation 
should practice the policy here suggested in some degree at least, and 
those who can not themselves so operate ought not to neglect opportunity 
to urge action upon others. If neglected the town will be a waste within 
a measurable period, and must lose most of its population. The same 
proposition is applicable equally to Altamont, Brandon, Duane, Frank- 
lin and Santa Clara, the truth of which is exemplified by Waverly's own 
experience. Comparing conditions there in 1895 with those which had 
obtained earlier, the late Hon. William T. O'Xeil wrote that where there 
had been two mills at Shanley there were then none and the houses for 
the operatives were deserted and empty; that a planing mill and box 
factory at St. Eegis Falls which had employed thirty hands had gone into 
disuse; that a saw mill which formerly worked a hundred men was 
employing only eleven ; that the railroad shops, with sixty workmen, 
had removed elsewhere ; and that lumbering operations that «had had 
camps containing five hundred workers had ceased altogether. The tan- 
nery was then running, but closed later, and has not been replaced, and 
more recently the rossing mill has closed because the preparation of pulp 
wood by that process has been found to be too wasteful. All of these 
changes except the loss of the railroad shops were due solely to the fact 
that the pine and large spruce in the vicinity had all been cut, and most 
of the hemlock stripped of its bark. The outlook for the time seemed 
black enough and hopeless and only that industries using hard woods and 
cutting the smaller spruce for pulp wood came into existence there 
could not have been much more of a future for St. Eegis Falls than for 
Everton, Santa Clara, Shanley and Brandon. But within a dozen or 
fifteen years the supply of hard wood and pulp stock will have been 
exhausted, compelling abandonment of the mills and leaving no field of 
employment open to labor. Can such conditions mean anything except 
one more practically deserted village in the event that reforestation 
is not undertaken soon? 

True, a summer resort business might be rebuilt up to some extent if 



Wavehly 547 

capital and enterprise for it could be enlisted, but vacationists and 
pleasure seekers will not favor a locality that lacks woods and water. 

Choosing Names 
It appears from the supervisors' records that Waverly twice escaped 
by a narrow margin a different christening. In 1861 the proposition 
was put before the supervisors to set off six townships from Dickinson, 
and to call the proposed new town Hammond's Falls — Charles F. and 
John G. Hammond of Crown Point having purchased large tracts of 
wilderness lands in the vicinity a short time previously, and erected a 
saw mill at what is now St. Eegis Falls. The supervisors voted adversely, 
however, and no further suggestion for the partition of Dickinson was 
presented until 1880. The proposed act as then offered gave to the new 
town the name Greenville, in compliment to Ira C. Green, a pettifogger, 
a justice of the peace, and an active worker in local politics, but busy 
rather than strong. The measure failed of passage by one vote. A few 
days later Hon. William T. O'Neil, who became the first supervisor, and 
who was for more than a quarter of a century the leading citizen of the 
place, appeared before the supervisors in advocacy of the proposition 
except that he suggested substituting Waverly for Greenville as the 
name which the town should bear. His arguments and personal influence 
induced one supervisor to change his vote, and the measure carried. 

Yet another incident of name designation attaches to the locality 
which it is worth while to chronicle. During the civil war, when prac- 
tically everybody in all that section was an ardent Unionist and admirer 
of the President, it was desired to have a post-office established, to be 
called Lincolnson. A Democrat of a neighboring town was engaged to 
draw the petition, and in the narrowness and bitterness of partisanship 
then so prevalent he wrote the name " Linkinson," and, rather remark- 
ably, it slipped through the post-office department with approval. In 
consequence the place was known for years as "Linkinson," but with 
change eventually to St. Eegis Falls. 

Beginning and Growth of St. Eegis Falls 

The year when activity began at St. Eegis Falls can not be fixed with 
certainty, but probably was 1858 or 1859. Beginning in 1855 and con- 
tinuing yearly to 1859, the Hammonds made extensive purchases of 
timber lands in the vicinity, and certainly not later than 1860 had a 
mill in operation, which had been built for them by Amos Harvey, with 
Hiram Cook, Julius Eising and Kirby and Josephus Titus comprising 



548 History of Franklin County 

a part of his working force. Until then the present town of "Waverly 
had had no inhabitants at all except perhaps two or three hunters and 
trappers. There were no roads other than trails and the Northwest Bay 
road leading into it, and forests shut it in for miles on every side. The 
first school was taught in 1860 by Miss Amy Saunders (afterward Mrs. 
Philip Shufelt) at a compensation of one dollar a week and board ! The 
rear of a log house, in the front part of which a family had living quar- 
ters, was the school room, and the only frame structure in the place, 
with the exception of the saw mill, was the dwelling house of Benjamin 
Babcock, who was the mill superintendent. Other than these there was 
nothing except a few log cabins on Main street and the lumber camps 
back in the forests. Mr. Babcock remained as superintendent until 
1865, when he was succeeded by his brother John, who was the father 
of Dr. L. W. and Brigham W. John died in 1867, and Oren Grimes, 
who came from Crown Point, afterward engaged in lumbering in Duane 
with his son-in-law, Fred O'Neil, and now resides in Malone, then took 
charge, and so continued until the Hammonds sold to Orson Richards 
of Sandy Hill in 1870. Mr. Eichards associated Thomas O'Neil with 
him as resident manager and partner in the business, but without pro- 
}3rietary interest in any of the lands. They expected to cut eight million 
feet of lumber per year. Mr. Eichards was interested in large enterprises 
elsewhere, and some of these going wrong he failed in 1879 for two and 
a half million dollars. In consequence the property here passed to the 
ownership of S. F. Vilas of Plattsburgh, and Vilas & O'Xeil ran the 
mill until 1882, when it was sold to Hurd, Hotchkiss & Macfarlane — ■ 
the latter a Michigan lumberman of large experience, and the other 
members of the firm being capitalists from Connecticut, who had been 
associated in a similar business with Mr. Macfarlane in the West, and 
who had become convinced that the field here offered opportunity for 
profitable investment and operation. Their original purchase compre- 
hended a tract of some sixty square miles, to which they added soon 
afterward half as much more. Their plans were so large and their action 
so energetic that most people in the locality received them with amaze- 
ment and incredulity, unable to comprehend that lumbering could justify 
the building of a railroad through a difficult and sparsely settled coun- 
try. Nevertheless by the autumn of 1883 they had completed a railroad 
from Moira to St. Eegis Falls, greatly enlarged the old Hammond mill, 
opened a store, and established logging camps which were to turn out 
vast cuts of timber. Their expenditure within half a year of the time 
that work was begun, including land purchases, was said to have reached 
a million and a half of dollars; and this proved to be little more than 



Waverly 549 

the beginning. Besides enlarging the old mill, they added steam for 
power, installed machinery for making elaphoards, lath and broom- 
sticks, built a machine shop and box factory, and conducted, a general 
store which had a trade of seventy-five thousand dollars a year. The 
effect upon St. Eegis Falls was marked. Beal estate values quadrupled, 
and the population was multiplied by five or six, with more money cir- 
culating than at any other place in the county. In the course of the 
next two or three years the railroad was extended southerly through 
Waverly into Santa Clara. The pace having become apparently too 
swift for Mr. Maefarlane, he withdrew from the concern in 1885, and 
Mr. Hotchkiss dropped out a little later. Mr. Hurd, having become 
absorbed in the work of extending the railroad and in the operation of 
mills which he had built elsewhere, sold the St. Eegis Falls plant to 
Dodge, Meigs & Co. of New York, or the Santa Clara Lumber Co., which 
sold later to the St. Eegis Paper Co., the present owner. 

Following the history of the Hammond mill, Watson Page and B. W. 
Babcock leased it from the St. Eegis Paper Co. in 1896 and operated it 
for a short time in the manufacture of hard Avood lumber, after which the 
Watson Page Lumber Company was incorporated by Mr. Page, William 
T. O'lSTeil and H. E. O'Neil, and continued the business successfully until 
1904. when the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, seeking opportunity to do 
business here, was permitted to take over the mill under lease — the gen- 
tlemen composing the Watson Page Lumber Company consenting to the 
arrangement out of pure public spirit, so that the hamlet might benefit 
through the establishment of a larger industry. The cooperage com- 
pany is still in possession, operating the plant as a stave and heading 
factory. Though it owns no lands in the immediate vicinity, it buys big 
lots of stumpage or immense quantities of logs from others. It has a 
railroad running half way across Waverly into and through Santa Clara, 
and half way over into Brandon for hauling stock. It has on its pay- 
rolls in connection with the St. Eegis Falls business about three 
hundred men. 

In 1865 the Hammonds sold a parcel of land at and adjacent to 
St. Eegis Falls to Solomon B., Edward and Francis Spaulding of 
Boston, Mass., and. James H. Young (the father of Mrs. W. T. O'Neil 
and Frank E. Young of St. Eegis Falls and of Charles H. of Malone) 
proceeded at once to build a sole-leather tannery for them, and then to 
operate it as superintendent. The firm became Spaulding & Bumstcad 
a little later, and did business until 1878, when it failed. The tannery 
was then operated under lease for a year or two by Perley P. MooTe 
& Co. Shaw Brothers of Boston bought it about 1880, converted it into 



550 History of Franklin County 

an upper-leather works, and, including bark peelers and teamsters, gave 
employment to a hundred and fifty hands. Mr. Young retired from the 
superintendency in 1882 after seventeen years of practically continuous 
service. Shaw Brothers had other large tanneries in Hamilton county 
and in Pennsylvania, and had so overextended themselves that they failed 
in 1884 for five million dollars. The establishment was sold to Arey, Mad- 
dock & Locke of Boston, and was run by them, first in the firm name, and 
then under the title of St. Begis Leather Company, with Samuel Smith 
as superintendent, until they also failed in 1901. The building was 
bought soon afterward by William T. and H. E. O'Neil, who converted 
it into a chair factory, which had a capacity of six hundred chairs per 
day, and later transferred to it the electric lighting plant which had been 
established originally in the Page lumber mill. Both chair factory and 
the electric works were run successfully until 1909, when fire wiped them 
out. The name was changed to the Cascade Wood Products Company, 
and Alexander Macdonald and Dr. L. M. Wardner became interested in 
it. A dam and pulp mill were erected on the tannery site, and an elec- 
tric railroad five or six miles in length constructed out into timber lands 
for hauling logs. While the concern's supply of timber lasted it sold 
the hard wood to the cooperage company, and itself worked up the soft 
wood. The railroad is no longer in existence, the rails having been 
taken up and sold for old iron; and the pulp mill is temporarily idle. 
H. E. O'lSTeil is the president and general manager. Acceptance of the 
office of deputy conservation commissioner compelled Mr. Macdonald to 
part with his interest in the property. The company owns also a small 
saw mill down the stream from its principal works, which it operates for 
custom business. 

To the progressiveness of H. E. O'lSTeil St. Begis Falls owns installa- 
tion of an electric lighting system at a comparatively early date. AVhile 
yet hardly more than a boy, in the face of discouragement and scoffing 
by many of his elders, he installed a small dynamo in 1898 in the plan- 
ing mill of the Watson Page Lumber Co., and organized the St. Begis 
Light and Power Company. Enlargement becoming necessary because 
of increase of business, the plant was removed to the chair factory, and 
after the fire there an excellent power was developed at Ploof's Falls, 
about two miles down the river, in the town of Dickinson, and as com- 
plete works were constructed as are to be found anywhere. Both dam 
and power house are of concrete, thorough and modern in construction, 
and adequate to all demands that are likely to be made upon it. A tub 
factory is operated in connection with it. All of the stock having been 



Waverly 551 

acquired by members of the family, the corporation has been dissolved, 
and the business is now conducted under the name O'iNeil & Co. 

About 1868 Benoni G. Webb, from Bellmont, built a saw mill three- 
quarters of a mile below the village. It was operated by Webb & Stevers 
until the firm failed, when it was acquired and run by Hubbard & Lowell. 
It burned in 1873. Charles H. Young rebuilt it in 1883, and in the 
course of two or three years sold it to J. W. Webb. B. P. Lindsay and 
then H. E. O'lNTeil followed in ownership. Hugh Baymo next had it, 
and now it is owned by the Cascade Wood Products Co. 

Other mills in Waverly have been a shingle mill, near Guide Board, 
built by W. T. ONeil about 1876, but long out of existence, two mills at 
Shanley, and a large rossing mill, built a few years ago by the St. Begis 
Paper Co. a half a mile above the village, which shut down permanently 
two or three years ago. It had a capacity of fifty thousand cords of pulp 
wood annually. Following the murder of Orrando P. Dexter in 1903, the 
Brown Tract Lumber Co. of Lewis county acquired the lands composing 
Mr. Dexter 's private park, and built a mill at Goose Pond (now Gile) 
to work up the merchantable timber. That having been accomplished, 
the mill was dismantled and removed. 

St. Begis Falls has a mica factory, established a few years since by 
Canadian capitalists, which employs twenty to thirty hands — mostly 
women and girls. The raw material is brought from Canada, and worked 
up here because the duty on the crude mica is less than on the finished 
product. Only the inferior grades of mica are handled. When manu- 
factured, mica is used for coating the cheaper kinds of wall paper, for 
giving toys and stage scenery the effect of having been frosted, as a 
lubricant in axle grease, etc., as an absorbent of glycerine in the manu- 
facture of explosives, in making buttons, and in flake form for electrical 
insulation. The product of the St. Begis Falls factory is utilized 
mainly for insulation purposes. 

Upon the withdrawal of Peter C. Macfarlane from the firm of Hurd, 
Hotchkiss & Macfarlane, he and W. J. Boss formed a partnership, to 
which H. W. Stearns of Bombay was admitted a few months later, and 
built mills at Everton, as told in the sketch of Santa Clara. Beference 
to the undertaking is pertinent here only because the concern's railroad 
to Everton began at St. Begis Falls and extended half way across the 
town of Waverly. 

The most casual consideration of the class of establishments which 
put St. Begis Falls on the map at all, and to which for a third of a 
century or more the activities of the place were almost wholly confined, 
can not fail to suggest plainly the character and conditions of the body 



552 History of Franklin County 

of the people. There were of course a few men of intelligence, enter- 
prise and force, hut the great majority were only common laborers, 
unlettered, many of foreign extraction and not naturalized, rough in 
garb and conduct, a proportion of them roystering if not lawless, and, 
not reckoning upon permanency of residence, had no particular interest 
for community welfare, and lacked individual enterprise and civic pride. 
Wages were squandered, and the liquor traffic grew and prospered. But 
marked and wholesome changes have occurred in recent years. While 
employment in the mills still affords the means of livelihood to most, the 
second generation of mill hands and lumberjacks, having had oduca- 
tional advantages, and grown to realize that the village is more than a 
temporary camp, and that even the poorest inhabitant has a stake in 
the general welfare, is a much more substantial type than the pioneers 
had been; the class of buildings has greatly improved; public order is 
far better enforced; the average of decency and morality is higher: and 
an interest in the schools and generous support for them are gratifyingly 
and commendably evident. In place of the single original schoolroom 
in the rear of a hovel the village now has a building which cost about 
nine thousand dollars, accommodates more than four hundred pupils, 
and employs eleven teachers. The higher branches are taught. J. L. 
Blood has been the school's efficient principal for eleven years. Indi- 
vidual enterprise has provided an excellent system of water-works, estab- 
lished an electric plant for lighting the streets, houses, st6res and 
offices, a newspaper, a bank, fairly good hotels and satisfactory stores. 
The saloons and bars have been proscribed, and, all in all, the hamlet 
compares favorably with even larger places in respect to the requisites 
for comfortable and enjoyable living and home advantages. It incor- 
porated a few years ago as a village, but subsequently rescinded such 
action. It has a population of probably between twelve and fifteen 
hundred. Besides the industrial works, it has three churches, public 
and parochial schools, fifteen or eighteen stores, a bank building and 
four hotels — only two of which, however, are open for business. 

The first hotel was built by Henry Bickford (the father of the mur- 
derer of Secor) from Dickinson, and is now known as the Frontier 
House. It has had many landlords since Bickford's time, among whom 
have been D. I. McNeil, Kenneth W. Kinnear, W. J. Alfred and 
Alexander Johnson. It is now owned by Evariste LeBoeuf, but is 
closed as a hotel because not permitted to have a bar. The Waverly 
House was built by William T. O'Neil in 1884, and kept by him for a 
year or two. He sold to Watson Page, and the latter to L. C. Goodrich, 
who sold to W. J. Alfred, and he to George Prespare. George Bishop 



TTaverly 553 

runs it as lessee. J. W. McNeil built over a store iu which O'Neil & 
Wg had traded, and sold it later to Simon McCloud, who keeps it 

OX,ilV',M T :? S f ° rmerIj a St0re hama S, erected by 

!' T ' " , rem ° dCled hy Ge0! = e Bish °P> the *«■«* owner 

it is closed because the town is " dry/' 

The first store Mas a Hammond concern, run by their mill super- 
n endent ^h, Eahcock; the second, Samuel W. Gilletfs; and the third, 
Whl T Otfeils, Richards & O'Xeil and then Vilas & O'Xeil con- 
tinued he Hammond store, and then followed George W. Orton and 
Ira C. Green Hamson G. Baker, Silas P. Fleming, and Charles II. 
Young -the latter as the partner of Mr. O'Xeil. The Fleming store 
which was a continuation of the first mercantile venture of Wm T 

tanu ' ™ * later aUd nm b3 ' the ShaWS ln C0miectl0 » ^ith their 

The Si Regis Falls National Bank was chartered and opened its 
doors lor business in May, 1905, with W. T. and EL E. O'Xeil, Alexander 
Maedonad Frank S. loung, E. P. Tryon and P, H. Burns constituting 
the board of directors. H. E. O'Xeil was the first president, and con- 
tinued m that capacity until 1916, when, other interests claiming most 
of his time, he was succeeded by A. S. O'Xeil, a brother. A. May the 
&st cashier, is now with the Federal Reserve Bank of Xew York 'and 
M. L Iveteham, assistant cashier, is treasurer of the St. Lawrence Trust 
Co at Ogdensburg T. H. Delaire, a St. Pegis Falls boy, is the present 
ashier: and AS. O'Xeil, Dr. W. A. Wardner, 0. L. Wilson and E. L. 
Hulett have taken the places of Messrs. W. T. O'Xeil, Macdonald 
lryon and Burns m the directorate. The bank is capitalized at $25 000 

S^nn^Ti Tit* ° f UpWardS ° f $12 '° °' and its de P osits to *> °™ 
^100,000. That the management means that it shall be helpful first to 

local interests is indicated by the fact that all of its available resources 
are m loans and discounts, next to nothing being locked up in bonds 
except such as are required to be owned to secure circulation. Its bank- 
ing house and fixtures are carried in assets at a valuation of $5,000. 

A MUEDER 

An unexpiated murder was committed September 9, 1903 at Dexter 
Lake, which lies four or five miles east of south from St. Regis Palls 
aud.at which Orrando P. Dexter from Xew York city had established a 
private park and built a costly cottage a dozen years or more previously 
In accordance with his daily custom, Mr. Dexter had started this morn- 
ing to drive to Santa Clara for his mail, but had proceeded hardly more 



554 History of Franklin County 

than an eighth of a mile when he was shot. The bullet, evidently fired 
from a high-power gun, penetrated the buggy back, struck Mr. Dexter 
near the shoulder blade, passed completely through his body, just above 
the heart, and imbedded itself in the horse's rump. A few rods farther 
on Mr. Dexter fell from the buggy, and was found almost at once by 
one of his employees who had heard the report of the gun. He was then 
breathing, but died without having spoken. The generally accepted 
theory at the time was that the murderer, aware of Mr. Dexter's custom, 
had laid in ambush at one side of the drive awaiting him, and after he 
had passed stepped into the road and fired. Certainly he could not 
have shot from his place of concealment, for the course of the bullet 
proved that it came from straight behind, and not at a tangent. No 
evidence could be found pointing to the murderer. Mr. Dexter's father, 
who was the head of the American News Company, offered a reward of 
five thousand dollars for evidence that would justify an arrest and 
secure conviction, but though the best detective ability in the locality 
and from outside as well gave effort to unravel the mystery not the 
faintest definite clue was ever developed — which, however, is not to 
say that the identity of the murderer was not strongly suspected in 
some quarters. 

Mr. Dexter had been in continuous contention with many people 
almost from the day of his coining to Waverly, and had had litigation 
with some of them. At one time he lodged charges with the 'Governor 
against the county's district attorney, and pressed them through a trial 
the costs of which mounted into thousands of dollars, and the finding in 
which exonerated the accused. He brought civil and criminal proceed- 
ings against other well known residents also for alleged conspiracy, and 
sued at least one newspaper publisher for libel because of publication 
of an item in town correspondence which two of the attorneys whom he 
sought to retain advised him was not libelous at all. He transferred 
his legal residence from New York to Connecticut in order, as was 
believed, that he might bring his actions in United States instead of in 
State tribunals. He had other troubles also, arising from lumbermen 
attempting to cross his preserve. It was thought that some enemy he 
had made by his contentious disposition must have committed the crime, 
though it is not, and was not at the time, conceivable that any one of 
those with whom his quarrels had been the most bitter, and which 
loomed largest in the public mind, could have been capable even of con- 
templating such a crime — much less of having committed it. 

Mr. Dexter was forty-eight years of age at the time of his death, was 



Waveely 555 

an admitted attorney at law, and in ordinary personal intercourse easily 
made himself agreeable and interesting; but when in antagonism with 
any one over real or imagined affronts or grievances seemed to be unre- 
lentingly pugnacious and implacably vindictive. 

Some op the Leading Men of the Town 
While but few Waverly men have held county or district offices, it 
must be recognized that those who won distinction in that field chose 
discriminatingly, so that they enjoyed the best that was to be had, and 
in generous measure. William T. O'Neil was elected to the Assembly in 
1881, and also in each of the three immediately following years. His 
service was excellent, and in one of his terms he was prominent as a 
candidate for the Speakership. He and Theodore Roosevelt became 
hearty co-workers in the Assembly, and were warm personal friends. 
The latter was of course the more dramatic figure and the more aggres- 
sively combative, but he himself, as well as others generally, recognized 
that Mr. O'Neil possessed the calmer and safer judgment, and thus 
acted often as a counterpoise to Mr. Roosevelt's sometimes too great 
impetuosity. The friendship formed between them in this period con- 
tinued unbroken to the time of Mr. O'Neil's death in 1909, and both 
when Mr. Roosevelt was Governor and when President Mr. O'Neil was 
his guest by invitation at the executive mansion. Mr. O'Neil was elected 
to the State Senate in 1906 and again in 1908, but died during his 
second term. While in the Senate his exceptional abilities commanded 
for him the most respectful consideration, and his committee assign- 
ments were among the very best and most responsible of those not 
requiring a legal training. William H. Flack was county clerk from 
1898 to 1904, and served one full term and a part of another in Con- 
gress from the Essex-Clinton-Franklin-St. Lawrence district. He died 
m office. Alexander Macdonald came to St. Regis Falls from Nova 
Scotia after graduation from Middlebury College to become principal of 
the high school. Almost as soon as he had been naturalized he was 
elected school commissioner for the second commissioner district, and 
held the office continuously for nine years. In 1910 he was elected to 
the Assembly, in which he served with distinction for six terms. In 
1914 he was a leading candidate for the Speakership, his prominence 
m the contest joined to recognition of his excellent abilities and long 
experience gaining for him the chairmanship of the committee on ways 
and means — a position which he held again in 1915. In 1916 he was 
appointed deputy State conservation commissioner at a salary of six 



556 History of Franklin County 

thousand dollars per annum. Mr. Macdonald is a son-in-law of the late 
William T. O'Xeil. 

Churches and Societies 

So far as known, the Eoman Catholic services at St. Eegis Falls were 
of only occasional occurrence in early times, and were held by priests 
from Brushton in private houses; and in 1883 Father Kormandeau of 
Brushton brought about the incorporation of St. Regis Church of St. 
Regis Falls, N. Y., with J. Quesnel and J. S. Bushey as the lay trustees. 
A short time afterward Rev. Father F. J. Ouellet located in the village, 
and effected a new incorporation on August 22, 1883, under the title 
Saint Ann's Church, St. Regis Falls, with Joseph Bushey and E. St. 
Hilaire as the lay trustees. Services were held for a time in one of the 
hotels, but the erection of a church edifice was quickly undertaken,, and 
completed in 1884. Father Ouellet carried his ministrations also to 
Everton, Santa Clara, Spring Cove and Brandon, and often to the 
logging camps at remote points in the forests. His rectorship at St. 
Regis Falls has continued uninterruptedly for thirty-odd years, and for 
the past few years he has had an assistant. The present membership of 
the church is about nine hundred, having fallen off a little from the 
high point through the removal of mill operatives on account of dis- 
satisfaction with the scale of wages in the mills. The present lay 
trustees are J. B. St. Onge and Frank Henry. 

While it is presumable that Methodist services were held from time to 
time at an early day by clergymen located at Kicholville or Dickinson 
Center, the first recognition of St. Regis Falls by conference as a station 
or parish was in 1882, when it was joined with Dickinson Center, and 
since which date one pastor has served both places. Services were held 
at first in the lumber company's ball, and in 1887 the erection of a 
church edifice was begun, which was finished the next year at a cost of 
$3,100. The present membership of the church is about one hundred 
and fifty. The society has provided a comfortable parsonage, and the 
pastor makes his home at the Falls. At the first election in 1886 Wil- 
liam E. King, Mrs. Esther Macfarlane and Daniel W. Flack were 
chosen trustees. The present trustees are M. A. Rowell, A. A. South- 
worth, B. E. Ames, E. E. Bond^, J. A. Ketcham and Leslie M. 
. Saunders. 

The First Free Will Baptist Church of St. Regis Falls owes its 
organization and even its continued existence to Rev. Kelson Ramsdell, 
now eighty-four years of age, who came from Dickinson Center to make 
his home in old acre with one of his sons. The church was organized 



Waverly 557 

March 23, 1893, and for a year or more worshiped in J W Webb's hall 
The church edifice, begun in 1894, was not finished until six years later' 
though it was occupied from 1895. Mr. Eamsdell has been the pastor 
for two periods besides having officiated at other times when there was 
a vacancy. In 1913 the society voted to close the church doors because 
the attendance had become small and because also so many of the mem- 
bers refused to contribute to the support of a pastor: but interest revived 
the next year, and the church has since remained open. The records 
give one hundred and eight as the maximum membership at any one 
tune, and now the number is just under fifty. The society entered into 
fellowship with the St. Lawrence Baptist Association in 1913. 

At Guide Board, a very small hamlet four miles south of St. Beo-is 
Falls, is a mission church, erected in 1896 through the generosity °of 
wealthy people then residing in the vicinity or accustomed to spend 
their summers in the locality. The church is Presbyterian, and under 
charge of the Adirondack mission, whose headquarters are at Keese's 
Mills in Brighton. Services are conducted regularly throughout the 
summer seasons, usually by divinity students, while in winter neighbor- 
ing clergy officiate at intervals. 

The St. Eegis Falls Universalist Church was formed in June 1916 
since when services have been held every alternate Sunday in Lemieux's 
hall by clergymen or divinity students from St. Lawrence University at 
Canton. The movement has developed a considerable interest, and' the 
attendance at the meetings is in respectable numbers. 

Durkee Post, G. A. R, No. 504, was organized a number of years ago 
The same pathetic condition obtains here that prevails in this order 
everywhere — the membership decreasing steadily, and the organization 
doomed to die, as infirmity and dissolution are fast summoning the 
veterans of the civil war for the final roll call. The post had sixty 
members at one time, and now has but fourteen. 

St. Eegis Falls Lodge No. 100, 1. 0. 0. P., was organized in December 
1886, with Hon. William H. Flack noble grand, and S. E. Gile vice 
grand. It soon erected a building for a home, which fire destroyed and 
something like ten years ago it built a larger and better structure' at a 
cost of about eight thousand dollars, the upper floor of which it occupies 
as its own lodge room, and rents to the Masons and other organizations 
Ine ground floor is finished for two business places, one of which is 
occupied for a post-office. The lodge has about one hundred and 
twenty-five members. 

Blue Mountain Lodge No. 874, F. and A. iff., was organized June 29, 



558 History of Franklin County 

1909 with Jerry LaPoint worshipful master and J. L. Blood senior 

"£ L^^^l Luor and opinm habits which 

patnta n'accompHshed eures which anally « stueh ma — 
of cases some of which had been decidedly tough. It also treated 
patiTnts for other ailments, but business failing to contmue m paymg 
volume the establishment was closed. 



Population 



The population of Waverly at the date of erection is unknown, there 
ine popuid,iiu 1 tter r lt 

having been no census between 1880 and ihju. in j 

had 2^270 inhabitants, who had decreased m 1892 to 1,750, mainJj by 
reason of the partition of the town to erect Altamont; and m 1900 the 
nuXr had fallen further to 1,615 because of mills fatting closed and 
wtrinroperations having been discontinued. Recovery came to a 
^Sl^ent as the hard woods began to housed and P u p mrl 

1 «l«-r+pd so that in 1905 the population had jumped to 2,160. It 
rsittonWd Utically unchanged _ the figures for 1915 havmg 
been 2,133, of whom 147 were aliens. 






CHAPTER XXII 
WESTVILLE 

Westville was formed from Constable in 1829, and was so called from 
the fact that it was the west half of what remained of the parent town 
after Fort Covington had been set off therefrom. For many years the 
northern of the two hamlets in "Westville was known as West Con- 
stable, but is now generally called Westville Corners. The other is 
Westville Center. 

The town had a population of just about six hundred when erected, 
but having always lacked transportation facilities, and its industries 
having dwindled with the collapse of the iron works and with the dis- 
appearance of its forests, its growth was slow even during the period in 
which there was growth at all, while from 1875 to 1900 the trend was 
steadily in the contrary direction. It was one of the half do/en towns 
in the county which made a gain in the number of its inhabitants dur- 
ing the period of the civil war, and in 1875 the maximum was reached, 
the census of that year having given it a population of 1,721, which fell 
exactly six hundred in the then ensuing twenty-five years — five-sixths 
of which loss occurred between 1875 and 1890. The population has 
remained practically stationary since 1900, and by the enumeration of 
1915 stands at 1,128. 

Westville's surface is generally level. In the northern part the soil 
is clayey, and in the central southern sandy. Elsewhere it is generally 
a light loam, with interval lands here and there which are rich and 
very productive. Formerly a considerable section of the southern part 
was thought to be almost worthless for farming purposes, but much of 
these lands have since been developed wonderfully, and have become 
Malone's garden patch, producing the earliest and finest vegetable? and 
berries. 

The town is watered by the Salmon river, which traverses it from 
southeast to northwest; by Deer river, which cuts through its southwest 
corner; and by a number of brooks, the largest of which are the Plumb 
and Briggs brooks. 

In the northeastern part there is a sulphur spring, the properties of 
the water being similar to the more famous spring at Massena. Forty 
or fifty years ago it was frequented by considerable numbers of people, 

[559] 



560 History of Franklin County 

who found accommodations during their sojourn at a neighboring farm 
house, and used the water for its real or supposed beneficial qualities, 
and larger numbers were accustomed to drive to the spring and take 
the water home with them. It is less visited now. 

Another spring of a remarkable character lies in the southwestern 
part of the town, its water as clear as crystal, pure and cold. Over a 
space of perhaps twenty to thirty feet in diameter the water boils up 
visibly through the sand, spreading out to a diameter of forty or fifty 
feet, and at some points is three or four feet deep. 

Amos Welch, from Grand Isle, Vt., was the first settler in the present 
limits of the town, having occupied in 1800 the site of the present 
burying ground at Westvilie Corners, and built and operated the first 
saw mill ; probably in the immediate vicinity. Even the oldest inhabitant, 
aged ninety-six years, does not remember ever to have heard of it. But 
the explanation is, I think, that Welch owned the property for only a 
short time, and that the life of the mill was brief. James Constable 
visited this northern section in 1804 and 1805 to look after the Con- 
stable landed interests here, and noted in the diary that he kept on the 
first trip that John Livingston then had a saw mill near Westville 
Corners, and on the second tour that the mill had been burned a few 
weeks previously " by a fire intended to drive away mosquitoes, possibly 
owing to carelessness." Mr. Constable's diary adds that Livingston him- 
self had no contract with the Constable estate for his lands, but' that be 
held "under that of Amos Welch." Moreover, he refers in 1801 to a 
saw mill at Welch's, four miles east of Man's, as nearly finished, so that 
it would seem that after having sold to Livingston Welch had moved to 
Constable. 

In 1801 Albon and Alric Man, brothers, of Vergennes, Vt., came to 
"spy out the land" and estimate its opportunities and advantages. The 
Man family had been Lumbermen and iron manufacturers in Con- 
necticut and Vermont for two generations, and the timber and water 
powers which Albon and Alric found here naturally appealed strongly 
to them. In 1802 they accordingly returned with their families, and 
were accompanied by a considerable colony of friends and kinsmen, 
including the Berrys, some of whom settled in Malone ; the Barnums, 
who located in Chateaugay, Burke and Bangor; the Hitcbcoeks, who 
established themselves in Constable, Malone and Fort Covington ; and 
John T. Phillips, who was the father of Dr. James S. Phillips, of 
Malone, and of Edwin, of Westvilte. Henry Briggs, Oliver Bell, Ezekiel 
Paine and others followed soon afterward, and the locality began to 
show activity and growth. Among others who located at an early day 



Westville 561 

were Alexander McMillan, Bobert Creighton, Alexander and David 
Erwin, Elisha and Henry G. Button, Silas Cushman, and Joseph and 
Thomas Wright. Many of these are still familiar names in several of 
the towns of the county, and a number of the men named or their 
descendants became prominent and filled large places in the affairs of 
Westville and of Franklin county. Twenty to thirty years later Jacob 
Wead, Guy Meigs, Goodrich Hazen, Ebenezer Leonard, Philemon Berry 
and Jacob P. Hadley (father of Joseph P.) had become residents, and 
were among the most active and influential men in the community. 

The Wrights built a saw mill at least as early as 1804 on the west 
side of the river and a grist mill on the east side, near Westville 
Corners. The saw mill was afterward owned, either in whole or in part, 
by William Creighton, of Fort Covington, then by Ebenezer Man and 
Guy Meigs, and from 182-1 to 1829 by Meigs & Wead, of Malone. In 
the latter year it was sold to Goodrich Hazen, who ran a store and 
potash works also. Afterward it was run in turn by Samuel Coggin, 
Henry B. Longley. Amos Cushman and Alexander McMillan. The 
grist mill, a quaint structure with odd equipment, was sold under fore- 
closure, and afterwards passed through many hands. The original mill 
was burned, the site and power privileges being acquired by Deacon 
Joel Lyman and William L. Streeter, of Fort Covington, by whom a 
new mill was erected and operated. They sold in 1862 to George W. 
Newell, and he to James McGregor. The mill was again burned and 
again rebuilt, about 1872. Then it was acquired by Henry A. Paddock 
and Samuel McElwain, and in 1877 was once more burned. It has not 
been replaced. The site is now owned by John C. Wright. 

A letter written by Major Albon P. Man in 1903 recites that his 
grandfather told him that when he came to Westville the plains lying 
between Westville Center and Malone were densely forested with pine 
of giant size, straight as an arrow. The brothers, Albon and Alric, 
engaged at once in lumbering, erecting a mill at the Center in 1803, 
and also cutting the best of the pine for ship masts. The lumber and 
masts were floated down the Salmon river to Fort Covington, where 
they were made into rafts and navigated to Montreal or Quebec. In 
1866 Major Man visited the latter city, and in an interview with the 
successor in business of the house with which the Mans had dealt was 
informed, after an inspection of the books, that some of the mast 
timbers had measured one hundred and sixty-five feet in length, and 
had brought from three to four thousand dollars apiece ! They went 
into three-decker frigates or men-of-war of Great Britain. The business 
continued as a partnership until 1810, when Dr. Man withdrew because 



562 History of Franklin County 

of misgivings as to its safety if war should occur with Great Britain. 
General Man continued operations on his own account until 1812, when 
war did break out, and a seizure and condemnation of some of his rafts 
by the British caused his bankruptcy. The Man saw mill went to Seth 
Hastings of Albany, and from him to Harry V. Man, was sold under 
foreclosure to Myron Hitchcock, of Fort Covington, in 1829, and then 
in turn to Samuel Man, Charles A. Powell, Joel Lyman, Robert Dunlop 
and Robert Clark. The latter tore it down in 1876. 

The Man Brothers also built a forge at the point now known as West- 
ville Center, and operated it for a few years .with the help of their 
relatives, nearly all of whom had been trained in the business while yet 
living in .Vermont. Bog ore, dug a mile or two to the west, and later 
brought from Brasher, was used. Subsequently the forge was sold to 
and run by Captain David Erwin (complimentary called "general") 
and Moses Erwin; and later by Edwin Phillips, a son of John T. It- 
continued to be worked, though not uninterruptedly, until about 1850, 
turning out such varieties of wrought iron as were in local demand. 
The shafting in the grist mill at the Center was hammered out in this 
forge, and is still in use. Nails were one of its products, the process of 
making them consisting in drawing out the iron under the hammer into 
bars or plates of the width of a nail's length and of about the proper 
thickness; and from these cutting and heading the nails by hand. In 
view of the labor requirements under this process it does noi seem 
strange that the usual price for the nails was thirty cents per pound. 
The forge made bar iron also for whatever uses blacksmiths found for 
it — horseshoes, sled shoes, etc. The final operators of the works were 
Peter Taro and three or four of his brothers. They had no capital, but 
possessed experience and skill, and turned out a superior quality of 
iron. Peter Taro became a noted character in Malone as a renovator- of 
hats by blacking them. He was seldom, or never, sober, and upon one 
occasion in a saloon he essayed the role of William Tell's son, permitting 
another character, for the consideration of one drink, to attempt to 
shoot an object from his head. Both men were drunk, and the bullet 
ploughed a furrow across Taro's scalp. " Up she goes, poor Peter ! " 

The Mans also built a grist mill at the Center in 1811. The chain of 
ownership of this property is identical with that of the saw mill, hereto- 
fore stated, except that it is now owned by J. J. SteAvart; it is still in 
operation. Mr. Stewart bought it from Robert Clark in 1904. 

Albon Man was a physician, and made his home east of Westville 
Center, at the place where Guy Man now lives. Though not enlisted, 
he save a good deal of attendance to the sick of General Wilkinson's 



Westville 563 

army at Fort Covington in 1813 and 1811, caring for some of them at 
his home. He was killed in 1835 by a fall from his horse while return- 
ing at night from a professional call, but whether he fell from the 
saddle when asleep or was thrown could not be determined. His sons 
were Ebenezer, also a physician, whose old age was lived in Malone; 
Buel H., a surveyor and lumberman; and Albon Piatt, who became 
eminent in the law in New York city. A daughter married Hugh Mc- 
Culloch, of Indiana, who was controller of the currency fifty years ago, 
and subsequently secretary of the treasury under two different admin- 
istrations. A grand-daughter married General George W. Wingate of New 
York city. Albon P. Man, a son of Ebenezer, was a surveyor, a lawyer, 
served as district attorney of Franklin county, and was major of the 
98th regiment of New York volunteers in the civil war. Afterward he 
located in Xew York, where he was for a long time in charge of the 
business of the Lorillard estate. In his later years he gave a good deal 
of time to the study of electricity and electrical experimenting, and 
disputed with Edison priority of invention of the incandescent lamp. 
He died in Brooklyn in 1905. Alric Man had military inclinations, and 
served actively in the State militia for many years. His first rank was 
that of ensign in 1804. In 1808 and 1809 he was a major in command 
of four companies in Franklin county, a lieutenant-colonel in 1811, and 
during the war of 1812 a brigadier-general. He resided near Westville 
Corners, on the place now owned by Gibson Cunningham. The original 
buildings were burned. Samuel and Harry V. were Alric's sons. The 
latter moved to Michigan and then to Chicago, where he was a prominent 
lawyer. 

If farming be excepted, lumbering continued for many years after the 
settlement of the town to be its principal industry. The Welch, Liv- 
ingston, Man and Wright mills have already been referred to, and in 
addition there have been the Andrew L. Hovey and Sewall Gleason, the 
Joseph P. Hadley, the Marshall Hoadley, the Peter Denesha, the Harvey 
Hyde or Talmadge Spencer and the Chapin mills. The firm of Meigs & 
Wead, once owners of the Wright mill, was composed of Guy Meigs of 
Constable and Samuel Clark Wead of Malone, who operated in the town 
as merchants, lumbermen and makers of potash and pearlash from 1821 
to 1829, when they sold to Henry G. Button. The Hovey and Gleason 
mill contained also a wool carding mill. It was owned by a number of 
parties from the date of its erection about 1831 until in 1870 it was 
acquired and operated for a long time by Warren L. Danforth. The 
Hadley mill was built about 1839 by Mr. Hadley, and was on Plumb 
brook, near his residence. The Hoadley mill was built about 1815 on 



564 History of Franklin County 

Deer river in the southwestern part of the town, and was operated by 
Mr. Hoadley until it burned. The Denesha mill was in the southern 
part of the town, on Salmon river, and was built by Charles Waterman 
in 1856, who sold to Charles W. Learned: Harvey M. Learned, Franklin 
N". Graves, and Denesha were subsequent owners. The Hyde or Spencer 
mill, built by Hyde, was next south of Denesha, and rotted down per- 
haps thirty years ago. The site and power, which is said to be a par- 
ticularly good one. now belongs to John P. and L. M. Kellas, of Malone. 
When it was proposed a few years ago to build a trolley line from Malone 
to Fort Covington, via Wcstville, it was planned to develop this power 
for generating the electric current to run the road. The Chapin mill 
was at the Center, and was built by Solon B. Chapin after the war. It 
was burned, and was rebuilt. Buel A. Man, of Westville, and George W. 
Hale, of Malone, became associated with Mr. Chapin as partners, and 
the mill was changed from an English gate to a circular. During this 
partnership a considerable cut of lumber was made annually. In 1868 
the mill was sold to John L. Eowley, who operated it until his death. 
It is now owned and run by his son, George P. All of these except the 
Chapin mill have disappeared, either burned or rotted down — most of 
them many years ago. When one inspects the present flow of water in 
the smaller streams which used to furnish power for them, it seems 
incredible that they could ever have had sufficient volume to turn a 
wheel even for an English gate mill. 

The manufacture of starch was a big business in the town for forty 
or fifty years from about 1850, the first factory having been built by 
Samuel Coggin above the Corners. Mr. Coggin used to claim that it 
was the first of the kind in the county, which, however, was probably 
not the fact, though it was the first in Westville. Frank Waggoner, now 
of Malone, but for many years a farmer in Westville, tells me that in 
one year he received from Mr. Coggin forty cents a bushel for potatoes 
at this factory, which I think is a record price. The factory was burned 
in 1875 when John Lightbody was operating it. George W. Hale had 
two factories in the town, one at the Center, and the other near the 
Corners. In the upper mill, which was built by Charles A. Powell, 
before the civil war, and of which Mr. Hale became part owner in 1859 
or 1860, was machinery for making shingles and staves and headings 
for the barrels in which the starch was packed. The mill burned in 
3 862, was at once rebuilt, and was sold and demolished about 1901 for 
the lumber in it. The lower mill was built in 1859 by James A. and 
William W. Stockwell, who sold it in 1865 to William Comstock, of 
Plattsburgh. He sold in 1867 to Mr. Hale. It is now used as a feed 



Westville 565 

mill hy Milo Dustin. The two mills ground as many as a hundred 
thousand bushels of potatoes in a good year, which, meant a product of 
almost a million pounds of starch. There was also a starch factory near 
the Denesha mill, built by James S. Dudley and Harvey Hastings, of 
Constable. It was burned, but was rebuilt by the same parties and Rice 
Harrington, of Bangor, who was a partner with them for a year or two. 
The building has been moved to the vicinity of the railroad at Con- 
stable, and is used as a storehouse. 

In 1849 and later Benjamin Chamberlain had a turning shop on the 
west side of the river, just below the Hollister wheelwright shop, and 
Henry B. Longley had a pail factory there, which burned in 1857, sup- 
posedly a case of arson. 

Westville has had at least three creameries or cheese factories. The 
earliest, a creamery, was built at the Center by John L. and Edward F. 
Rowley, who a year or two later erected a cheese factory north of the 
Corners. MacPherson & MacFarlane, Canadians, who had something 
like forty creameries and cheese factories in this State and Canada, 
built a cheese factory at Briggs street. The Briggs street factory was 
burned and was rebuilt as a creamery by Arthur D. Sperry, who at one 
time owned all three establishments. Not one is now making either 
butter or cheese — one of them having gone out of existence, and the 
others being operated as skimming stations for the condensary at Fort 
Covington. 

Lime was formerly burned in considerable quantities in Westville, 
east of the Center. Masonry laid with it was not attractive in appear- 
ance, having a dingy look, but was strong and almost indestructible, the 
lime becoming as it aged almost as hard as stone itself. Michael Bron- 
son, George P. Poor, Thomas Rogers and Myron Barber each owned and 
operated a quarry and kilns, but lime has not been made there in 
quantity in a good many years. 

Dr. Lauriston M. Berry and William Ackerman (perhaps better 
known as Payne) engaged in the manufacture of brick near the Corners 
in 1872, and continued in the business for three years. The output was 
good in quality, but the home demand was so small, other markets so 
distant, and transportation facilities so utterly lacking, that the busi- 
ness was discontinued. 

Early merchants at the Corners were Samuel Fletcher, Meigs & 
Wead, Ebenezer Man, Henry G. Button, Edwin Phillips and John Doty, 
Charles and Horace Johnson, Abner_Doty, Go odrich Ha/cn, William 
Smith and Amos Cushman. Mr. Button was one of the largest property 
owners in the town, active to a degree, shrewd and enterprising, widely 



566 History of Franklin County 

known, and possessed of a good deal of influence locally. Goodrich 
Hazen, also an important factor, was sold out under foreclosure in 
1846. Later merchants at this point include John O'Reilly, Leslie Free- 
man, Dr. L. M. Berry, John C. Wright, Alonzo A. Rhoades and W. S. 
Ordway. Ed. Cleveland had a tinshop in 1855 or 1856. 

Joseph Holbrook, who lived just below Trout River, in Canada, built 
a store at the point known as the Beaver, on the international line, and 
Joseph Walker managed it for him for a time. It was then sold to 
John Tolmie, who conducted business there in considerable volume for 
3'ears. Mr. Tolmie removed to Saratoga. There is no store at the 
Beaver at present. During Mr. Tolmie's time there was a great deal 
more of smuggling than now, and, his store being partly in Canada and 
partly in the State, his trade was from both countries, and out of it 
went into Canada or came into New York without much risk the goods 
that were the cheaper on one side of the line or the other. 

Stores at the Center have been kept by Solon B. Chapin, Wells & 
Parker, John S. Parker, Willard JgLJ Hyde , Elnathan Fairchild, Buel A. 
Man, Guy Hollister, Orville S. Rhoades, Simeon Wiley and W. A. 
Ordway & Sons. 

The oldest hotel in Westville dates back to 1828 or earlier, and used 
to be known as "the plastered tavern house." It was at the Corners 
and was demolished in 1856, its last use having been by Moses Abbott 
as a wheelwright shop. The earliest mention of it that I find in deeds 
recorded in the county clerk's office makes Abner Doty the owner in 
1836, and then John S. Hogaboom in 1837. Henry G. Button bought 
it in 1839. The names of its landlords I am almost wholly unable to 
ascertain. Harrison Freeman, now ninety-six years old, came to West- 
ville as a lad of six years in 1828, and a memorandum of his reminis- 
cences made by his daughter, Mrs. A. N. Tower, states that he stayed 
the first night with his parents at this hotel, and that it was then kept 
by a Mr.,JJyd.e. Mr. Freeman's recollection, though not positive, is 
that later landlords in it were Abner Doty and Philemon Berry. Dr. 
L. M. Berry, a nephew of Philemon, confirms Mr. Freeman as to the 
latter, saying that he was landlord there before 1840, and continued for 
a good many years. Moreover, the Franklin Telegraph in 1829 con- 
tained an advertisement by a Malone attorney offering the hotel for 
sale, and referring to it as then kept by Mr. Berry. 

Another hotel stood at the intersection of the Trout River road with 
the highway leading from Fort Covington to Malone, at about the point 
where Mr. Ordway's store and Grange Hall is now located, and was kept 



Westville 567 

for many years by Ebenezer Leonard. A man named Davis kept it 
about 1850, and Moses and " Sandy " Cowan were there for a time, and 
Henry B. Hawkins and C. C. Stoughton afterward. The property was 
sold by the Leonard heirs in 1871 to Thomas McCullough, who con- 
tinued to run it for a few years. The building was eventually torn 
down and the timber and lumber in it used to build the creamery of 
Arthur D. Sperry at Briggs street. 

A third hotel, owned by Henry G. Button, was kept by his son-in-law, 
Joel Leonard (who committed suicide in 1863), and from 1845 to 1851 
by Philo Berry. It was almost across the road from the " old plastered 
tavern house," and hardly a stone's throw from the Ebenezer Leonard 
hotel. It was bought in 1851 by Captain Xelson Wiley, and kept by 
him until about 1868. After that, while making no pretension to being 
a hotel, it did nevertheless accommodate guests occasionally for a num- 
ber of years. Most of the hotel buildings and the sheds have been torn 
down, though a section of the former still stands, and is occupied by 
Mrs. Wiley as a residence. 

Westville was not a dry town in early days, and for a part of the time 
that the above recital covers the Corners was on the branch stage line 
that Jonathan Thompson operated from Chateaugay to Fort Covington 
in connection with his through line from Plattsburgh to Ogdensburg. 
Thus business was livelier there then than now, and there was also more 
disorder. 

While the recollection of old residents is that there never was a hotel 
at the Center, nevertheless descriptions in deeds given sixty years ago 
refer to Elisha Hollister's tavern there, thus seeming to warrant the 
inference that Mr. Hollister did at least accommodate occasional guests. 
He had a liquor license in 1864 and 1865. 

Sixty years ago or more Curtis Downer had a hotel on the " Whiskey 
Hollow Koad," near Guy Man's present residence. 

Yet another tavern, almost forgotten and now out of existence for 
half a century or more, was built by Jacob P. Hadley (father of Buswell 
and Joseph P.) about 1820 in that strangest of localities for an inn, near 
George Downer's, on the road leading from Malone to Fort Covington, 
about six miles north of Malone. This road was not a stage route, and 
there has never been anything like a hamlet in the vicinity. The busi- 
ness that a tavern there could have enjoyed must have been extremely 
light. 

In June, 1857, forest fires extended in a number of towns to cleared 
lands, and were particularly severe and destructive in Westville, where 
farms were ravaged over a territory two miles wide by four long. Darius 



568 History of Franklin County 

Hardy lost his crops, buildings and tools in the barn, and H. H. Everest 
and Marshall and Theron Hoadley also were heavy losers. The former, 
as the fire approached, buried his books as justice of the pace and one 
hundred dollars in mone} r , and fled for his Life. After the fire both 
books and money were found to have been all destroyed with the excep- 
tion of a twenty-dollar gold piece. Corn just up was burned to the 
ground in one field of over nine acres. More than twenty-five buildings 
in a mile square were destroyed. 

July 29, 1886, a severe wind and hail storm swept across the town 
from northwest to southeast, leveling fences, smashing window glass, and 
ruining crops. The wind continued for only about twenty minutes, and 
the fall of hail hardly half as long. On some farms not a rod of fence 
remained, and one farmer whose fields had given fine promise of an 
abundant yield offered to sell all that was left for five dollars. 

Franklin Lodge, F. & A. M., was organized in Westville in 1851 with 
Dr. Ebenezer Man master, James C. Spencer senior warden, and John 
Barr junior warden. It had twenty charter members, and throve until 
1870, when its membership began to decrease, and in 1899 had fallen 
to eight. In 1859 it voted to hold its communications alternately at 
Trout Eiver and Westville Center. Parties in New York City who 
desired to organize a lodge with as low a number as could be had hit 
upon this condition, and arranged to have Franklin Lodge transferred 
from Westville to New York. One of the conditions was that the eight 
members should be continued as such for life, without payment of dues 
by them. 

The town has never had any other fraternal or civic organization with 
the exception of the local grange, which was organized in 1906 with 126 
members, but has not flourished. Its present membership is 79. Its 
meetings are held in the hall over Ordway^s store at the Corners. 

Eeligious services were held irregularly from a very early but not 
definitely ascertainable date by Eev. Ashbel Parmelee and Eev. Alex- 
ander Proudfoot; and not improbably the latter's ministrations in our 
county may have been due to the fact, as stated by Hough, that formerly 
some of Westville's first settlers had been his parishioners. The next 
authentic information that we have of religious work here is derived 
from Eev. James Erwin's " Beminiscences of a Circuit Eider," in which 
he tells that in 1831 and 1832, at the age of eighteen years, and while 
still a student at Fort Covington i\cademy, he officiated every Sabbath 
for nearly a year in a private house at Coal Hill, in the southwestern 
part of Westville, where he formed a class of more than sixty members. 



"Westville 569 

Mr. Erwin reported conditions to the preacher in charge, who must have 
been the pastor at Malone, " and they [the class] were taken into the cir- 
cuit and regularly supplied with preaching." Vet the first record of a 
church organization in the town was the incorporation of the Westville 
Free Church Society May 1, 1838, at a meeting held at the school house, 
and by which it was voted to locate the then proposed church building 
at Westville Corners. In 1840 Dr. Ebcnezer Man deeded the land for 
a site to James Walker, Latham Hyde, Buel H. Man, Grafton Downer, 
David Freeman and Henry G. Button, trustees. The consideration was 
one cent, but the premises were to revert to the grantor if ever converted 
to other than church uses or if the church were abandoned. A thousand 
dollars was contributed to the building fund by Edward Ellice, of Eng- 
land, who had succeeded William Constable in the ownership of a large 
part of the lands in the town. Upon at least one Sabbath the church was 
used by the three denominations, Presbyterians, Methodists and Univer- 
salists. But ordinarily occupation of it was by the Presbyterians or 
Universalists. Though the former enrolled with the Presbytery of 
Champlain in 1842, they had no statutory incorporation until 1885, and 
in many periods, both before and since such incorporation, have had no 

settled pastor. Bev. Eeed served them for a time a good 

while ago, and latterly they have been dependent upon the Presbyterian 
pastor at Fort Covington to officiate at their services. The Universalists, 
never incorporated, and removing from the town, dying or allying them- 
selves with other denominations, their movement expired in Westville. 
I think that they never had a resident pastor, but were supplied now 
and then by a preacher from Malone. About 1885 the church building 
had come to be sorely in need of repair, and considerable feeling devel- 
oped over the question of renovating it or erecting a new edifice. It was 
finally decided to take the latter course, a new house of worship was 
built upon another site, and the old structure was torn down — the land 
reverting to the Man estate. This new building is distinctively 
Presbyterian. 

Though the county clerk's records show no certificate of its incorpora- 
tion, it appears that there was at one time a Wesleyan Methodist Church 
of the Bangor and Burke circuit, of which Harvey M. Learned and Allen 
Hutchins were two of the trustees for the Westville parish — the organi- 
zation included Westville as well as Bangor and Burke, as is manifest 
from the fact that Mr. Learned and Mr. Hutchins as trustees conveyed 
lands here in 1870 and 1875 to Francis 0. Jarvis and Horace N". Bass- 
ford, which lands comprised nearly fourteen acres adjacent to Mr. 



570 History of Franklin County 

Learned's farm six or seven miles north of Malone village, and are under- 
stood to have been a parsonage lot. Services used to be held at the school 
house. A Mr. Sisco was an early Wesleyan pastor, and under him the 
movement had its greatest activity and strength, and he planned at one 
time to erect a church building in the neighborhood. A Mr. Gaskill 
preceded Mr. Sisco, and in subsequent years Wallace Learned, a resident 
of the locality, and not ordained, officiated as preacher. 

Fifty-five years ago, or thereabout, at a time when there was no 
clergyman of any denomination stationed in the town, Elder J. N". Webb, 
a Baptist, long stationed at Fort Covington, officiated often in the union 
church at the Corners. 

Westville first appears in the records of the Black Eiver Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1837, apparently as an independ- 
ent charge, though no clergyman was assigned to it in that year — the 
minutes showing that it was " to be supplied." From 1838 to 1842 the 
conference records carry no mention of Westville, but in the latter year 
Matthew Bennett was assigned to it, and thereafter appointments con- 
tinued to be made to it until 1858, from which year it does not again 
show in the records until 1897, when it is coupled with Constable. 
Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, and as the local church records show, 
it was associated with Constable throughout the entire period indicated, 
except for a short time when it was joined with Fort Covington, the two 
being served by one pastor. The local records begin only with 1861. The 
church edifice, which is at the Center, was erected in 1869, but incor- 
poration was not effected until 1874. It is interesting to note that the 
conference records give the membership of the church in 1837 as one 
hundred, but as only fifty in 1849. The figures for 1837 prove that 
Bev. Mr. Erwin's work and that of Malone circuit riders had not been 
without fruit. There was also a " class " at Briggs street in very early 
times. Barnabas Berry was its leader. During a good many years 
Charles Johnson, who made his home in Westville and had the status 
of a local preacher, officiated at Methodist services both at the Center and 
at the Corners when the Methodists had lacked a regular pastor or the 
regular pastor was absent or ill, and hardly a death occurred in the 
town in his later years that he was not called upon to preach the funeral 
sermon. His ministrations included also the work of a circuit rider, 
and his field extended from Malone well down into Canada. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION AND THE 
SAINT REGIS INDIANS 

The Reservation 

The St. Regis Indian reservation in New York consisted originally 
of a tract equal to six miles square excepted out of the lands sold to 
Alexander Macomb and associates, to which, with the assent of the mem- 
bers of the syndicate in question, certain other lands were added, includ- 
ing the mile square now comprising the village of Fort Covington, a 
similar mile square at Massena, and the natural meadows along both 
banks of the Grass river between Massena and the St. Lawrence? Such 
additions were conceded because the Indians had built and owned mills 
at both Fort Covington and Massena, and were dependent upon the wild 
meadows for hay. Thus the reservation reached originally from the 
Grass river to the Salmon, though with breaks in it, and comprehended 
something like twenty-five thousand acres. It was set apart to the 
Indians by treaty concluded in 1796, and was- a compromise between 
what the State was at first disposed to concede and the claims advanced 
by the Indians. The latter had been clamorously seeking every year 
from 1792 to obtain adjustment of their demands upon the State, but 
without result other than the payment by the State of the expenses of the 
deputations which they sent to Albany, accompanied by petty presents 
and by State promises to give consideration to the matter as soon as 
practicable. 

The case as presented by the Indians, those in Canada as well as those 
in this State being party to the negotiations, was that, by reason of primi- 
tive occupancy and the power to enforce jurisdiction, sovereignty of the 
soil of all Northern New York had been vested in the Mohawk tribe, 
even from prehistoric times, and that the then claimants were Mohawks' 
having removed from the vicinity of Schenectady to Caughnawaga, and 
never having bargained away their title. Such sovereignty, they insisted, 
had extended from the foot of Lake Champlain southerly to Lake George 
or beyond ; thence westerly into Herkimer county ; thence northerly to 
the St. Lawrence river; and thence easterly to the place of beginning. 
That the Mohawks had had power to enforce jurisdiction and dominion 
preceding the coming of the whites it was not necessarv to prove, because 

[571] 



572 History of Franklin County 

it was admitted. The Mohawks were the fiercest, the cruelest and the 
bravest, as well as the mightiest, of any of the tribes of the League of 
the Iroquois, so that none of the other aborigines dared challenge col- 
lision or conflict with them. Such, indeed, were their ruthlessness and 
prowess at the zenith of their strength that the Indians of Massachusetts 
would flee in terror if a band of them approached, and often from even 
a single warrior, " as sheep from a wolf," and it is recounted that one 
of them could enter alone a Long Island Indian village, wantonly brain 
one of the assembled braves, and depart unmolested, so great was the 
fear that swift and awful retribution would be exacted for any act of 
resentment or reprisal. For almost a century the Caughnawagas, who 
were the progenitors of the St. Eegis, maintained the old Mohawk repute 
and practices, and, marauding and massacring in mad savagery, were a 
scourge to New England settlements — impossible as the fact ma3 r 
seem if judged by the present inertia, indolence and sloth of their 
descendants. 

While it is not essential to this story to follow with particularity the 
history of the Mohawks other than those who Avithdrew to Caughnawaga 
about 1667, as told in the first chapter, it will not be uninteresting to 
touch upon it briefly, for it will help to a better understanding of land 
claims and disputes which arose later. The French Jesuits, seeking to 
detach from the British colonies and locate in Canada or vicinity all 
Indians whom they succeeded in persuading to profess conversion to 
Christianity, established in 1749 a mission colony at what is now Ogdens- 
burg, consisting mainly of Mohawks, which grew eventually to number 
more than three thousand souls. They were admitted as one of the 
Seven Nations of Canada, but, becoming scattered and ceasing to be a 
distinct organization, were absorbed in part by the Caughnawagas and 
the St. Regis, and in the course of time their place in the family of the 
Seven Nations was given to the St. Eegis, who, by the way, were admitted 
also, after the war of 1812, as one of the Iroquois Six Nations, in the 
place of the Brandt faction of the Mohawks, then established in Upper 
Canada as a consequence of having taken a bloody part for the king in 
the revolutionary war. The Canada reservation of those was west of 
Niagara, and comprised twelve hundred square miles, granted to them 
in 1784 as a reward for their services in the war. 

It would be profitless, as well as impossible without a vast amount 
of research, to set forth fully the various agreements and cessions by 
which the Indians relinquished the great body of their lands in New 
York, always getting the worst of the bargain, For illustration, the 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 573 

Island of Manhattan, now the richest part of the city of New York, 
was estimated to comprise twenty-two thousand acres, and was bought 
for twenty -four dollars, or at the rate of about one cent for each ten 
acres. While few other such transactions reflect so strikingiy the giving 
of much for little, it is impossible to cite a single similar conveyance 
where the Indians received anything even approximating real value. 
Nor was this fact due always to Indian ignorance or generosity, but, 
rather, to his recognition of his helplessness in dealing with the whites, 
and to his appreciation of the fact that he had no choice but to accept 
what was offered, or see his lands taken without any compensation what- 
ever, for where there is no appeal from might the weak can not compel 
justice, and seldom enjoy it. 

As against the contention of the Indians known as the Seven Nations 
of Canada (which included the St. Eegis and the Caughnawagas) that 
as Mohawks they were the trite inheritors of all the lands that the tribe 
had ever possessed, and that title thereto remained vested in them because 
they had never in any way parted therewith, the State pleaded that it had 
in fact acquired title to the entire tract through treaties concluded with 
the Six Nations in ITS? (in which the British Mohawks resident in 
Upper Canada had joined), and with the latter separately in 1795. The 
consideration paid by the State for the cession last stated was sixteen 
hundred dollars all told, which was to cover the expenses of the Mohawk 
deputies in attending the conference, and also for a distribution of pres- 
ents among members of the tribe. By the terms of this latter treaty the 
Upper Canada Mohawks ceded and released " to the people of the State 
of Xew York forever all the right or title of said nation to lands within 
the said State," and acknowledged that their claim thereto was " wholly 
and finally extinguished." 

The St. Begis Indians and the other tribes or families of the Seven 
Nations of Canada stoutly disputed that the treaties in question vali- 
dated the claim of State ownership. Some of the " big talks " at the 
[•ouncils between the Indian deputies and the State's commissioners are 
interesting and illuminating. The latter having laid down the ulti- 
matum that the Seven Nations had nothing to sell, and that no negotia- 
tions would even be entertained upon any grounds except that the Stale 
was willing to pay something for the sake of establishing amicable rela- 
tions, and for the purpose of extending some measure of relief to the 
Indians in their condition of need, the Indians argued that if the Upper 
Canada Mohawks had indeed assumed to convey the lands which the 
St. Begis and the Caughnawagas were themselves then claiming, they 



574 Histoky of Fkanklin County 

had sold that which they did not own, to which the State's commission- 
ers responded that the Mohawks were too jnst a people to have so d hat 
which did not belong to them, wheienpon an Indian deputy retorted 
"What makes them just in your eyes, we expect, is because they stole 
from us, and sold to you. This is what makes them a just people. Had 
we several years ago, done as those have whom you cal a just P«-ple- 
tot is, had we sold off all our lands then ; underhandedly sold our -to*. 
ers and then fled our country, took up arms, came and killed men, 
women and children indiscriminately; burnt houses and committed every 
other act of devastation ; and, in short, done everything we could against 
our once nearest friends - then, according to what you say of th e 
Mohawks, you would have esteemed us a just people, and therefore would 
not have disputed our claim." This was, of course, a reference to h 
fact that the Upper Canada Mohawks had f ° u f ™. " ° hal 
British in the war of the revolution, whereas most of the St. Kegis had 
remained passive, and the sympathies of a large part of the tribe had 
Len with the colonists. Again, the spokesman of the Indian deputies 
said ■ « You who depend upon ink and paper, which ought never to fade, 
must recollect better than we, who can not write, and who depend only 
on memory, yet your promises are fresh m our minds. 

In Z course of the negotiations the Indians at length stated defini- 
tively what they would be willing to accept, viz. ; A reservation to run 
east ten miles from St. Kegis and thirty-five or forty miles up-the St 
Lawrence, with an average width of twenty miles, together with an 
annuity of three thousand pounds, equivalent at that time to about seven 
housaid five hundred dollars. They proposed later to reduce then- 
demand for reservation lands to one-third of the tract «S^> 
but still very much larger than that finally allowed to them, and he 
annuity to four hundred and eighty pounds. In the end they accepted 
a ash payment of one thousand two hundred and thirty pounds, six 
shillings and eight pence, with an annuity of two hundred and thirteen 
pounds 8 , six shilfings'and eight pence, with provision that the reservation 
should be as outlined in the first paragraph of this chapter 

Concerning the amount of the purchase price paid in cash and of the 
annuity it is to be borne in mind that the value of the pound, varying 
» the different colonies, was rated in New York at about two dollars 
and a half, which made the cash payment $3,179.96 and the annu ty 
$533 33 all of which was to be shared proportionately between the 
Canghnawagas and the St. Regis. After the war of 1812 the latter urged 
that inasmuch as the former had fought with the British -^ con- 
flict they should be cut off from further enjoyment of any part of the 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 575 

annuity, and that it should be apportioned to the American St. Regis 
Indians exclusively, but our State authorities held that this would be 
a breach of faith, and consequently payment was continued to the 
Caughnawagas until 1841, when they were given the amount of prin- 
cipal represented by their allotment of the annuity ($4,414.44), and 
since then payment has been to the American St. Regis alone. Subse- 
quent treaties, by which parts of the original reservation were surren- 
dered, were held with the American St. Regis alone. 

In 181 G the mile square on the Salmon river, together with a separate 
and additional tract of five thousand acres abutting on the west, was 
surrendered by treaty in consideration of an annuity forever of thirteen 
hundred dollars, and in 1818 the Indians parted with two thousand 
acres adjoining and strips of four rods wide running north and south 
and east and west across the reservation for highway purposes — the 
agreement providing that the two thousand acres should be cut into 
farms and lots and sold by the State. The price paid was an annuity 
of two hundred dollars. In 1824 the tribe conveyed to the people of 
the State of New York the mile square in the town of Massena and the 
mills thereon for one thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars in cash, 
and later in the same year one thousand acres commencing on the east- 
erly side of the St. Regis river for one thousand seven hundred and fifty 
dollars down and an annuity of sixty dollars forever. They also ceded 
to the State for one dollar in cash and an annuity of three hundred and 
five dollars forever a tract that they had previously leased to Michael 
Hogan, and Mr. Hogan then bought the premises outright from the 
State. The next year they conveyed eight hundred and forty acres, com- 
prising a part of the present village of Hogansburgh, for two thousand 
one hundred dollars cash, and in 1845 bargained away the meadows 
along the Grass river, embracing two hundred and ten acres, at the 
price of three dollars per acre — which, however, is not all that they cost 
the State, as rental disputes and other claims on the part of white 
settlers had to be adjusted and satisfied by the State. 

These cessions reduced the size of the reservation to 14,030 acres. 
Capitalizing the annuities at a five per cent, rate and adding the cash 
payments, it is seen that the Indians received for their claims something 
like fifty-six thousand dollars, besides the reservation which thev still 
hold. J 

Though of only theoretical consequence, it is nevertheless not inap- 
propriate to remark regarding this reservation, and others similar, that 
the whites are accustomed to insist that the "ultimate fee" is in the 
State, with only the right of perpetual occupancy in the Indians. This 



576 History of Franklin County 

view simply assumes the final extinction of the Indian race. I have 
before me a letter from a gentleman who has taken a deep interest in 
the Indian problem, and who is quite disposed to resent the arrogance 
with which our people have ever dealt with the red man, suggesting that 
it would be equally justifiable for the Indians to advance, upon a like 
assumption, a claim as to the lands held by the whites. But unless the 
State should vest the lands in the Indians individually it really matters 
not at all where the " ultimate fee " does lie, because fighting for pos- 
session of territory in this country, at least as between denizens therein, 
has passed forever. Individual ownership is not desired by any of the 
Indians, because they have a dread of taxation, and are far sighted 
enough to apprehend that if each for himself had tbe power to alienate 
his lands they would soon be stripped of them through the superior 
cupidity and cunning of the whites, and so become scattered and 
homeless. 

The annuity paid regularly to the Yew York St. Eegis Indians since 
1825 has been $5,131.66, and until 1841 the amount distributed by this 
State to Canadian Indians was $266.67 additional. The money is 
divided per capita, after deduction of small tribal expenses (printing 
ballots, etc.), and in 1915 the amount paid to each buck, squaw and 
pappoose was $1.35. Payment is always made in coin, and originally 
was made at the mouth of the Chazy river to deputies representing the 
tribe, but in late 3~ears it has been made at St. Regis or Hogansburgh to 
the heads of families. Besides this contractual money distribution, the 
State is continually expending considerable sums for the maintenance 
of reservation schools and for building and repairing roads. 

The St. Regis reservation in Canada, which is in part contiguous to 
the New York reservation, lies along the southern shore of the St. 
Lawrence in the province of Quebec, and includes also a number of 
islands in the St. Lawrence. In area it is but little more than half as 
large as the New York reservation, containing 7,125 acres. The quality 
of the land, however, averages better than in Yew York, for some sec- 
tions of the latter are very stony. In richness and fertility there is 
probably no better soil, except in the far West, in all Canada. Canada 
provides a fund about once in ever}' five years for the purchase of a 
hundred and fifty to two hundred acres additional of reservation land, 
which is allotted to Indians not already provided with homesteads, but 
beneficial use is required as a condition of obtaining such allotments. In 
respect to land allotments and possession, the Canadian practice seems 
far better than that in Yew York. Land once apportioned to a Canadian 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 577 

Indian is held by him with practically the same security that is carried 
by a deed, and at death the holding descends to the children, while with 
us an Indian may take for himself any unoccupied part of the reserva- 
tion, and sometimes even "jumps" the farm of a neighbor; or allot- 
ments are made as the whim or judgment of the chiefs determines. The 
islands comprising a part of the Canadian reservation are among the 
most attractive in the St. Lawrence, and, indeed, it is true of both reser- 
vations that a finer location could hardly be imagined. In themselves 
they are ideal, and only the lack of Indian industry, enterprise and 
thrift, and the corrupting influence of the neighboring whites, stand in 
the way of their becoming, besides beauty spots, centers of fruitful 
productiveness and prosperity. With the splendid strides that have been 
made by these people in recent years, and which are believed to hold the 
promise of yet further great progress, the drawback first named is thought 
to be likely to be overcome and disappear. 

Unhappily the timber which formerly abounded has been all but cut 
off or destroyed by fire, and not enough remains for a sufficient supply 
of fuel for the tribes. Of the New York reservation all except the lands 
that are acually under cultivation are held and used as commons, and 
formerly, if not now, any Indian had the right to cut timber as he chose, 
either for his own needs or to sell, and fifty or sixty years ago from four 
to five thousand cords of fire wood were thus cut annually, the greater 
part of it having been shipped to Montreal. If every Indian were now 
to obtain his fuel from the reservation, it is estimated that not a tree 
would remain after two or three years. The Canadian government dis- 
tributes eight hundred dollars every half year among its St. Regis 
Indians, and also grants annually to the aged and needy certain gifts 
of blankets. A half century ago it gave blankets to all, and also guns 
and ammunition, but, the Dominion policy being to stimulate these wards 
to become self-reliant and self-supporting, nothing additional to the 
annuities is now given except in cases where otherwise actual suffering 
would occur. A representative of the United States Indian commis- 
sioner visited every Canadian reservation in 1914, and also made an 
exhaustive study of the Canadian Indian policy and administration. He 
pronounced them superior in almost every respect to our own, commend- 
ing in particular Canada's judicial system as it bears upon the adminis- 
tration of both civil and criminal law in Indian affairs. There the 
Indian agents have the power and authority of justices of the peace, and 
there is a special Dominion constabulary for serving process and making 
arrests. 

19 



578 History of Franklin County 

The Canadian St. Eegis numbered 1,695 in 1915, which was a gain 
of one hundred and eighty from 1911. 

The Indians 

Summarizing the story told in the first chapter of this book, relative 
to the settlement of St. Eegis, the first comers (about 1,750) were the 
two Tarbells, who had been made captives at Groton, Mass., had mar- 
ried into the tribe at Caughnawaga, and had been practically forced to 
withdraw therefrom because of jealousy which their superiority pro- 
voked among their comrades. In this migration they were accom- 
panied by their families and by the parents of their wives. Something 
like ten years later they were joined at St. Eegis by Father Anthony 
Gordon, attended by a considerable body of Caughnawagas whom he 
had induced to follow him in order that they might be withdrawn from 
the vicinity of Montreal, with its opportunities and temptations to 
intemperance and other debasing conditions. Though afterward a 
number of Caughnawagas who had participated on the side of the Ameri- 
cans in the war of the revolution (largely, no doubt, because their old 
friendship for the French made them antagonistic to everything British) 
sought refuge at St. Eegis at the close of the war, and though other small 
additions have come in a similar way, some of them from the disrupted 
settlement at Ogdensburg, available records show that colonization other 
than that of Father Gordon has been only of a straggling sort ; and thus 
the increase that has obtained in a century and a half has resulted, 
for the most part, from the excess of births over deaths, and to whites 
intermarrying with the Indians for the sake of acquiring the privilege 
of sharing the lands and annuities of the latter. (A white who 
marries a squaw gains the right to use of reservation land, but is not 
counted in apportioning the annuity.) More because of such inter- 
marrying than from any unchastity of Indian women is due the fact 
that there is not now a full-blooded Indian on the reservation. Such 
intermarrying, however, has been practised but little, if at all, in recent 
years. Formerly, when it was prevalent, the whites who were parties to 
it were almost all males. Instances of white women marrying Indian 
men have been extremely rare. It deserves to be said here that in the 
judgment of those best informed — priests, physicians, merchants and 
agents who mingle intimately among these people — the Indians as a 
whole are more virtuous than the average of whites living under similar 
conditions and with like advantages, or the lack of them. 

Father Gordon arrived at St. Eegis on June 16th, which is the festi- 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 579 

val of St. Eegis. Hence the name that the place has since borne. St. Regis 
was a native of Savoy, France, and was born in 1597 and died in 1640. 
At the age of twenty he became a Jesuit novice, and, after serving as 
instructor in colleges of the order, passed the rest of his life in apostolic 
labors. He was beatified in 1716, and canonized in 1737. A biographer 
cites a letter from him requesting to be assigned to the Canada mission, 
but there is no record that the request was granted. 

A church edifice of logs covered with bark, and with one end par- 
titioned off for the priest's residence, was erected almost at once, but 
was burned in 1762. Soon afterward a frame building, more pretentious, 
replaced it, and was used for thirty years. A stone church structure was 
erected in 1791 and 1792, after which the frame building was demol- 
ished. The entire interior and contents of the stone edifice were 
destroyed by fire in 1865, but the massive walls, said to be nearly four 
feet in thickness, were but little injured, and inclose the present church, 
which was finished in 1886. The first church is said to have had a bell, 
but where it came from or whither it went there is no authentic explana- 
tion. Legend declared it to have been brought from Deerfield, Mass., 
when that place was sacked by the French and Caughnawaga Indians, 
and to have been the same which the Indians at Caughnawaga had 
bought with furs in France, but which, captured by the British in tran- 
sit, had been taken as a prize of war to Massachusetts, and acquired 
by Deerfield. This story, though interesting, is improbable, for Deer- 
field was sacked a half century before there was a church at St. Eegis ; 
and it is far more likely, if a bell was in fact toted from there, it was 
established at Caughnawaga, which would hardly have transferred so 
precious a belonging to a smaller and weaker colony. It is known, 
however, that the St. Eegis Indians bought a bell in 1802 with a part 
of their annuity moneys. 

The church at St. Eegis stands almost within a stone's throw of both 
the St. Eegis and the St. Lawrence, and is in Canada, about a third of 
a mile north of the United States boundary line. The parochial residence 
faces it, only a few feet distant. 

The church records for the first few years were burned with the 
church, but from 1764 they are complete and painstaking except for the 
occasional periods when the mission was without a resident rector. 
Those kept by Father Gordon are written in Latin, and the subsequent 
ones in French. At least three of the rectors served twenty years or 
more each. Eev. Father Bourget, the present rector, who is highly 
esteemed, and who preaches to the Indians in their own tongue, has 
been in charge continuously for twenty-four years. He counts about two 



580 History of Franklin County 

thousand six hundred Indians as adherents of the Catholic faith ; declares 
that the Indians, both in Canada and in New York, are steadily increas- 
ing in numbers ; and regards their condition, both material and moral, 
as greatly improved during the past few years, with which view the 
concensus of opinion of all in the vicinity who are familiar with the 
situation is in agreement. While the Indians contribute something toward 
the support of the mission, it is principally sustained by allowances from 
the organization for the propagation of the faith. 

As told by Father Marcoux to Dr. Franklin B. Hough in 1852, a 
Frenchman from Montreal in 1826 persuaded one of the Tarbells, then 
a St. Eegis chief, to accompany him to Europe for the purpose of pro- 
curing an endowment for the church and presents for themselves. The 
king of France gave them for the church oil portraits of St. Eegis and 
St. Francis Xavier, together with a considerable sum of money, and 
the pope presented them a set of books and silver plate for the service 
of the church, a rosary of jewels and gold valued at fourteen hundred 
dollars, and other articles. Upon their return to New York the scoun- 
drelly Frenchman disappeared with all of the gifts except the rosary 
and the portraits, leaving Tarbell destitute of money and dependent upon 
contributions by the charitable to defray his expenses to St. Eegis. For 
nearly forty years the portraits adorned the walls of the church, but 
were burned in the fire which destroyed the building in 1865. What 
such works meant to primitive minds is indicated by a letter written in 
1727 by Father au Poisson, a Jesuit missionary to the Indians of the 
Mississippi region : " They [the Indians] are in ecstacies when they see 
•the picture of St. Eegis in my room ; they put the hand over the mouth, 
which is the sign of adoration among them. * * * Some of them 
pass the hand several times over the face of the saint, and then place it 
on their own face ; this is a ceremony that they perform when they wish 
to show any one a mark of veneration. Then they place themselves in 
different parts of my room, and say : ' He is looking at me ; he almost 
speaks ; he needs only a voice.' " 

So far as I have been able to ascertain, the Indians at St.- Eegis took 
no part in the revolutionary war, though two chiefs who later became 
conspicuous members of the tribe had rather notable records in the 
struggle. Louis Cook, then a Caughnawaga, acted with the colonists, 
in whose army he held a lieutenant-colonel's commission; and Thomas 
Williams, also a Caughnawaga, and the putative father of Eleazer, served 
with the British. Colonel Louis had great influence with the Indians 
generally, enabling him to induce many to remain neutral who other- 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 581 

wise would naturally have joined the British, and at Oneida and else- 
where he enlisted bands to scout and fight for the American cause. He 
had interviews with General Washington, Count de Bochambcau, Gen- 
eral Knox, General Schuyler and other men eminent in the colonial 
army, and appeared before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature 
to testify concerning the disposition and probable course of action of the 
Canadian Indians. The information that he furnished and the services 
that he rendered, particularly in scouting and as a bearer of dispatches, 
were deemed invaluable. 

Thomas Williams, though it is claimed for him that personally he 
sympathized with the colonists, accompanied General Burgoyne on his 
ill-fated march to Bennington and Saratoga, and is represented by his 
son, Eleazer, to have refused to act as escort to Jane McCrea when she 
was so foully murdered. Williams joined also in an expedition against 
Oswego, and was with the party that sacked Boyalton, Vermont. He is 
said to have so conducted himself upon more than one occasion, and to 
have so led those under his guidance, as to have caused British plans to 
miscarry, and also to have always stood out against acts of savage 
bloodthirstiness and cruelty. 

The Indians of St. Regis, both the British and the American factions, 
were supposed to remain inactive and neutral in the war of 1812, but 
Colonel Louis Cook and Captain Thomas Williams, who had located at 
St. Regis after the revolutionary war, and had become chiefs of the 
American tribe, were zealous partisans of the American cause, as also 
were William Gray and Eleazer Williams. It was Gray who guided 
Major Young and his command from French Mills (Fort Covington) in 
1812, when a British troop at St. Regis was surprised and captured. 
Though the number of St. Regis followers of these four leaders to the 
field was inconsiderable, it is not improbable that but for them a larger 
number would have gone over to the British. Even as it was, a French- 
man named Isaac LeClare, who held a British commission as lieutenant, 
enlisted eighty of the St. Regis, who participated in a number of engage- 
ments. Twenty of them were present at the attack upon Sacket 
Harbor, and thirty at the attack upon Ogdensburg. Some of them were 
at the fight at Chrystler's Farm, near Cornwall, but were not permitted 
to take part in it. At about the same time that LeClare raised his com- 
pany a British commissioner appeared at St. Regis with presents for 
the Indians, and sought to persuade them to take up arms in a body. 
But they declined the proposition. 

For a time during the war of 1812, because of the distressful condition 



582 History of Franklin County 

of these Indians, by reason of their not daring to leave the reservation 
to hunt, five hundred rations were issued to them daily from French 
Mills by the American military authorities. 

One other war incident of interest, according to a tradition of the 
tribe, is that as Sir John Johnston was making his way down the valley 
of the Eaquette in his flight from Central New York to Canada in 1776, 
the St. Eegis Indians sent a body of warriors to meet him, carrying 
parched corn and sugar to save him and his retainers from starvation. 

The number of Indians among the St. Eegis who have been outstand- 
ing figures, towering above their fellows, are to be counted almost upon 
the fingers of one hand. One of the earlier Tarbells appears to have 
been a really great orator. He was known as " Peter the Big Speak," 
and was usually put forward as spokesman of the tribe in such councils 
as it held. 

Louis Cook was born in 1740 at Saratoga, his father being a negro 
and the mother an Indian. He himself was decidedly African in appear- 
ance. Captured near Saratoga by the French and Indians in 1755, he 
was claimed by the latter, whom he and his mother accompanied to 
Caughnawaga. He became a warrior while yet a youth, fought with the 
French at Ticonderoga in 1756, and with the French at the defeat of 
Braddock, and later was again at Ticonderoga against Abercrombie. His 
part in the war of the revolution and in that of 1812 has already been 
told in these pages. Injured by a fall from his horse during a skirmish 
in Western New York, he died near Buffalo in 1814. His fidelity was 
unquestioned, and his judgment was regarded as remarkably clear and 
unerring in all matters that engaged his interest. He was invariably 
made one of the deputies to represent the tribe in its affairs with the 
State, with power to act for it. Thus he was a party to the treaty in 
1796 by which the St. Eegis reservation was established. Though unable 
to read or write, he spoke both the French and English languages, and 
of course the Indian, fluently. He is rated by historians as the ablest 
man ever connected with the St. Eegis tribe. 

William Gray was born in Washington county, of white parentage, 
and was a soldier in the colonial army at the age of seventeen years. 
He was captured by the British near Whitehall, and taken to Quebec, 
where he was held a prisoner until the close of the war. Then he located 
at Caughnawaga for a time, subsequently moving to St. Eegis, where he 
adopted the language and customs of the tribe. He built a mill and 
engaged in the mercantile business at what is now the site of Hogans- 
burgh, but which was then known as Gray's Mills. His service to the 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 583 

United States in the war of 1812 made him a marked man, so that the 
British planned and accomplished his capture. He was again taken to 
Quebec a prisoner of war, and died there in 1814. He was the tribe's 
chief interpreter, and participated in an important way in negotiating 
the treaty of 1796 with the State. By consent of the Indians themselves, 
the Legislature voted him individually a grant of two hundred and fifty- 
seven acres of land out of the reservation, a part of which grant lay on 
the Salmon river. Though never a chief in name, his standing and 
influence with the Indians was yet that of actual leadership and trusted 
advisor. 

Thomas Williams, a chief of the Caughnawagas from 1777 until he 
removed to St. Regis, and then a chief there, is credited with having 
possessed unusual intelligence and superior judgment. He was the 
grandson of Eunice Williams, and the father of Eleazer. For his service 
in negotiating the treaty of 1796, and because his course in the war of 
1812 had cost him the forfeiture of property that he had owned in 
Canada, he was apportioned fifty dollars a year out of the State's annuity 
to the tribe. 

A sketch of Eleazer Williams, the greatest Indian orator of his time, 
and a notable character from whatever angle viewed, forms a separate 
chapter of this book, but it may here be added that "A prophet is not 
without honor save in his own country," the application of which in 
this instance is that on the occasion of a visit to St. Regis recently I asked 
every Indian that I met in going from Hogansburgh to the church, and 
also in returning, where Williams's grave was (he is buried near Hogans- 
burgh), and not one seemed even to have ever heard the name! 

A publication issued by the Secretary of State places the number of 
the St. Regis Indians in 1810 at one thousand and forty, which must 
have included the Canadians, for a special enumeration of the tribe 
in New York in 1819 listed only four hundred. The next enumeration 
that I have been able to find, made by Captain James B. Spencer of 
Fort Covington in 1835, tallies to a man with that of 1819. But between 
these years epidemics had decimated the tribe, and offset the natural 
increase. Thus in 1829 small pox swept off considerable numbers, and 
in 1832 Asiatic cholera caused seventy-eight deaths in eleven days, and 
typhus or ship fever added fifty-six more. Besides, tuberculosis has 
always been a scourge to these Indians, fostered by their habits of life, 
the character of their dwellings, and unsanitary surroundings generally. 
But in 1855 they had nevertheless increased to four hundred and thir- 
teen, notwithstanding another small pox and cholera epidemic had raged 



584 History of Franklin County 

in 1849 and typhus throughout the summer of 1850. Since 1855 no 
enumeration except that in 1915 has shown a decrease in their numbers. 
While in some periods the gain was only slight, it was considerable in 
others. The figures are : 

1855 1865 1875 1892 1905 1910 1915 

413 426 737 1195 1206 1249 1086 

I venture the confident judgment that the total for 1915 is grossly 
incorrect, and in support of that view submit the following : The parish 
records of the St. Begis mission, very carefully kept, show for every 
year since 1910 an excess of baptisms over deaths — such excess having 
been in one year about thirty-five per cent., and in another eighty per 
cent. Besides, every man of intelligence at Hogansburgh who is at all 
conversant with Indian conditions feels that he knows, though of course 
unable to adduce positive proof, that the tribe is increasing in numbers, 
and, while not attempting to fix exact figures, the State education 
department is unqualifiedly of the opinion, based upon its school returns, 
that the enumeration data are erroneous. But absolutely convincing and 
indisputable are the records of the attorney who disburses the State 
annuity, which is always a fixed amount, with the per capita allowance 
necessarily varying as the number of beneficiaries fluctuates. Such dis- 
bursement is made in accordance with a list of those entitled to partici- 
pate, which is prepared by the clerk of the tribe, and then revised and 
verified by the attorney. The amount paid to each Indian in each of the 
years from 1911 to 1915 has been: 

1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 

$1.48 $1.45 $1.43 $1.40 $1.35 

The whole number who had been paid up to August 16, 1915, was 
1,532, and eight then remained to draw their allotments, so that, accord- 
ing to the Indian attorney, the actual population was then 1,540, or 454 
more than the enumeration gives.* There isn't a shadow of doubt that the 
attorney's figures are at least substantially correct; and the failure of 
the enumerator to find an equal number is believed to be explicable upon 
the probability that heads of families reported to him only those who 
were actuallv at home at the time of his visit, and omitted to include 



* It is to be noted that there is a discrepancy of $51.34 between the actual 
distribution to the. Indians and the full amount of the annuity, which arises 
from the fact that the sum stated was paid for printing ballots and for 
other expenses incurred by the tribe as a whole. 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 585 

those who were absent temporarily, working in the hay fields in other 
towns, or employed elsewhere in other occupations. Yet further, the 
results which the writer asserts are wholly consistent with the American 
census records from 1865, while the enumeration is not only in conflict 
with these, but is impeached also by Canadian enumerations, which estab- 
lish a continuous growth in numbers of the same family living just over 
the boundary. But waiving for the moment the question of inaccuracy, 
the enumeration nevertheless shows an increase of 660 in half a century, 
or about 155 per cent., while upon the figures of the attorney the gain 
in the same period was 1,114, or over 260 per cent. The increase in & the 
white population of the county in the same period was only about 60 
per cent. 

The St. Regis tribe used to be divided into clans, known as the Wolf, 
the Big Turtle, the Bear, the Plover and the Little Turtle. The division 
related anciently to war parties, and membership in a clan was 
hereditary, descending from mother to son. But such distinctions dis- 
appeared many years ago, and, even if still known among the Indians 
themselves, now possess no significance. Indeed, it is rather note- 
worthy that these Indians, unlike most other bands in the State, have 
preserved none of the barbaric customs of their ancestors, nor do they 
observe any of the old pagan feasts and ceremonies. Their only religious 
festivals are those of the Eoman Catholic Church, especially of Corpus 
Christi, the celebration of which, with its grand procession, formerly 
attracted considerable numbers of spectators from various parts of the 
county. It is still observed regularly, and with great enthusiasm. 

The St. Begis Indians of New York elect annually in June one chief 
and one sub-chief, whose terms of office are three years each. Formerly 
these elections were conducted by those entitled to participate arranging 
themselves in groups to express their choice, which, of course, gave no 
secrecy to the procedure, so that the truculent and dominating braves 
often intimidated the more timid, and simply swept the elections by 
aggressive force. But now the voting is by secret ballot, the arrange- 
ment of which is identical with that of the blanket ballot used by the 
white electors of the State until discarded for the modified form of the 
Massachusetts ballot four years ago. At the election in 1915 there were 
four parties represented on the ballot, designated as the Iroquois, the 
Mohawk, the Eedman and the Indian, and using respectively as emblems 
a horse, a cow, an eagle and an anchor, with a blank column for writing 
m the names of independent candidates. More privileged than the white 
voters of the State now are, an Indian may vote an entire ticket by mark- 



586 History of Franklin County 

ing only a single cross in his party circle. This system corrects the 
abuses incident to the old practice. 

Theoretically the chiefs thus elected possess complete authority, but 
if their commands are not voluntarily respected, or the allotments of the 
lands made by them are not accepted by the parties interested, they have 
no real power for enforcement of their decrees. As a matter of fact, 
however, it is understood that the members of the tribe generally defer 
to the chiefs, and acquiesce more or less good naturedly in their decisions, 
though so far as possession and occupancy of lands is concerned, the old 
practice of control by the chiefs now obtains only in a slight degree, for 
the Indians generally continue permanently in such holdings as they 
may have acquired unless they themselves bargain them away. Indi- 
vidual control in this regard has come to be recognized, and conveyances 
of possessory rights by one Indian to another, but not to any one not 
a member of the band, are now made by written instrument very much 
as the whites convey by actual deed. This practice the court of appeals 
has recently sustained as valid and binding. 

All opinion based upon intelligent observation and study of the con- 
dition of the St. Eegis Indians is that it has improved remarkably in 
every respect in recent years. Eeports of legislative committees for 
investigation of the Indian problem (one of which had Hon. James S. 
Whipple as its chairman, and the other Hon. Charles E. Matthews, of 
Bombay) not only declared such improvement to be unmistakable, but 
also maintained that in morals and in their approach to the better prac- 
tices of civilization, as well as in the more general use of the English lan- 
guage, this tribe stands easily first among all of the Indians of the State. 
Though among the whites at Hogansburgh the impression prevails that 
the Canadian St. Eegis are better off in this world's goods, more indus- 
trious, more intelligent and more moral than those of New York, Bev. 
Father Bourget, the mission priest at St. Eegis and thus in close touch 
with both branches of the family; Mr. Francis E. Taillon, the accomp- 
lished Canadian Indian agent at St. Eegis ; and Mr. Maurice W. Lantry, 
until recently the New York attorney, who has lived on the border of the 
reservation all of his life, and has had business and other dealings with 
the Indians for a long period, are agreed that the two bands, sprung 
from the same root, are in a practical equality at all points. No three 
men that I know are better qualified to give a correct judgment in this 
matter, and, being in concurrence, their view is entitled to be regarded 
as conclusive. 

The weakness of the Indian in respect to intemperance is proverbial, 
but though the use of liquor at St. Eegis has been, and is yet, all too 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 587 

common, and has been productive of poverty, crime and a train of other 
evils, conditions in this regard are markedly better than of old. The 
laws of both New York and Canada against the sale or gift of intoxicants 
to Indians are stringent, and, while still not infrequently transgressed, 
are more carefully observed at present than was formerly the case. If 
only the State would assign a State constable to duty on the reservation, 
still further betterment would almost surely follow. But even as it 
is, the Indians are modifying their bibulous habits, drunken carousals 
and disturbances are diminishing, and a gratifying percentage of the 
band are actually teetotalers. 

As early as 1846 the State recognized the importance of educating 
these Indians, and in that year appropriated money for the erection of 
a school house and for the employment of a teacher. That policy has 
been continued ever since, until now there are eight schools on the reser- 
vation, employing as many teachers, at an annual expense to the State 
of something like four thousand dollars. But the attendance is only 
fitful, and the application of the pupils less earnest than could be wished. 
Provision for making the compulsory attendance law more effectual is 
greatly desired by the education department at Albany, but is believed 
to be possible only through the appointment of a State truant officer, 
who could also be a State constable and peace officer. The importance 
of legislative authorization to that end can not be too strongly empha- 
sized. There should not be omission in this connection to credit the 
school at Hogansburgh, conducted by the Sisters of Mercy and main- 
tained from the Drexel fund, as told in the sketch of Bombay, with 
doing a grand work in instructing fifty Indian girls in the courses of 
study usually pursued in our common schools, and also in domestic 
science. The degree of improvement in home conditions of the Indians 
attributable to this school I believe to be great. 

Perhaps the most striking contrast between present Indian practices 
and inclination and the old is seen in his growing disposition to work, 
in his increasing appreciation of more comfortable and more respectable 
belongings and surroundings, in his greater consideration for the women, 
and in an ever developing pride to be thought, and actually to be, a real 
cog in the wheel of the world — all of which is evidenced in a better per- 
sonal appearance, in improved dwellings and other buildings, in cleaner 
yards, and generally in more seemly behavior. The Indian is naturally 
childlike, easily interested and spurred to energetic and enthusiastic effort, 
but tiring quickly in any enterprise, and woefully lacking in persevering 
industry. It was thus not uncommon in earlier years for them to work 
diligently in the spring in planting and sowing, and then utterly neglect 



588 History of Franklin County 

their fields throughout the summer, and sometimes even for the harvest. 
But to-day there are farmers on the reservation who attend to business 
as closely and as intelligently as their white neighbors, and whose imple- 
ments are modern and well cared for. Much of their stock also is excel- 
lent. Besides farming, some have acquired trades, and are really efficient 
workers at carpentry and in other mechanical occupations. Others make 
it a practice to go out among the white farmers of the locality to work 
in the fields during the summer, and in winter to find employment in 
the lumber camps. Still others busy themselves at home in manufactur- 
ing lacrosse sticks, pick and axe handles, snowshoes, etc. In the months 
of May and June they fish with seines and gill-nets at the mouths of the 
St. Regis and the Baquette, often making good money. The sturgeon, pike 
and other hard fish are shipped to New York, and the soft and coarser 
ones eaten at home or sold locally. Two or three years ago a sturgeon 
brought twenty cents a pound, and the females a dollar and a half a pound 
additional for the eggs, which are made into caviare, so that sometimes a 
single large fish fetched fifty dollars or more. The women engage in bead 
work, making baskets and moccasins, in sewing and in care of the home. 
They are immeasurably better treated and more respected by the men 
than in the old days, when it was deemed degrading for a male Indian 
to do any labor, and the squaw had to be the drudge. It is credibly 
stated that there is hardly a house on the reservation that does ,not have 
its sewing machine, and usually some member of the family is busy with 
it, making clothes for herself or the children, or sewing for hire for 
others. 

In 1895 the United States court of claims rendered a judgment in 
favor of the Indians of New York for $1,967,056 on account of lands 
west of the Mississippi that had once been set apart for this State's 
tribes, but which, not having been occupied by them, were sold. The 
money (locally called "Kansas money") was paid in 1905 and 1906, 
a total of $179.33 to every Indian man, woman and child, so that some 
families received two thousand dollars or more each. The St. Eegis 
Indians generally made excellent use of the sums that they received, 
expending it mainly in building better houses and outbuildings, in improv- 
ing such as were worth fixing over, and in purchasing farm implements, 
cattle and horses. Some was spent also for apparel, and it is not the 
least of the changes in the Indian here that he now dresses far better 
than formerly. 

Besides paying these Indians their annuity, and exempting them from 
all taxation and from the duties to which citizens are subject, and sup- 
porting their schools, the State provided a few years ago that they 



The Saint Regis Indian Reservation 589 

should have a physician ready to respond to their calls without cost to 
themselves, but compensated at a stated salary at the public expense; 
and it has always been generous (perhaps even to the point of wasteful- 
ness) in constructing and maintaining reservation highways. As early 
as 1820 the State began outlay in this direction, and in 18-10 it appro- 
priated four thousand dollars for highway work at this point. About 
1887 appropriations began to be voted with regularity for similar pur- 
poses, amounting usually to three thousand dollars a year, but after a 
time in not so large sums until 1909, when they reached yet larger fig- 
ures. The total so granted and expended in six years has been 
$69,762.65. A considerable part of this total went for a bridge over 
the Eaquette river near Nyando, which, by the way, spans the stream at 
the point where it conveniences the whites more than it does the Indians. 
What is to be the future of this people? Their increase, which 
carries no suggestion of race suicide, certainly does not indicate 
extinction. But will there be disappearance through amalgamation? 
The supposition is not reasonable that the State will continue through 
the centuries to deal with the Indians simply as its wards, and the trend 
of opinion seems to be that eventually they must be made citizens, enjoy- 
ing the privileges and benefits of that status, and accepting its respon- 
sibilities and burdens. But the time for so radical a change is by no 
means yet full, and it would be little short of shameful shirking of an 
obligation to a people who have had little except injustice at the hands of 
civilization to invoke it until they shall have made much further progress 
in intelligent comprehension of the meaning and responsibilities of civic 
life, and also in ability to safeguard for themselves their individual 
rights and property interests. Happily the advancement which they 
have been making of late carries some promise that, continuing in equal 
or greater measure, they may at a day which can not now be even guessed 
attain to self-reliance, a capacity and an enlightenment which will justify 
abandonment of the State's historic policy concerning them, and sub- 
stitution of the course of leaving them to fend for themselves. In that 
event, amalgamation would almost certainly follow, and a race be blotted 
from the world. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
FRANKLIN COUNTY AND THE WAR OF 1812 

Had not the command on this northern frontier been given in the 
war of 1812 to a general whom Secretary of War Armstrong character- 
ized as a drunken incompetent, and General Winfield S. Scott as an 
" unscrupulous imbecile," it seems at this distance in time not improb- 
able that Franklin county might have escaped almost untouched in the 
conflict. True, two or three insignificant affairs with the enemy had 
occurred in 1812 just at the border, but until General Wilkinson brought 
General Hampton to Chateaugay (which village then contained only 
eight or ten houses) and himself to French Mills (now Fort Covington), 
everything had been quiet here for an entire year, and, inasmuch as an 
offensive movement against this locality, no matter how successful, could 
have held no promise of strategic advantage, no opening of a rich coun- 
try to ravage, nor assurance of capture of any considerable quantity of 
arms, munitions or subsistence stores, it is not unlikely that, but for the 
coming of General Wilkinson, the British would have continued to let 
us alone, as our own utter weakness locally was guaranty that we would 
not undertake to operate against Canada. 

The records as to early activities in this locality are very incomplete 
and somewhat confusing. War was declared by Congress June 18, 
1S12, and according to pay-rolls in the office of the adjutants-general 
both at Albany and at Washington one company of State militia, serving 
through three separate terms of enlistment, with a maximum enrollment 
of sixty-four officers and men, but never mustering that number at any 
one time, and under the command of Eufus Tilden, of Dickinson (now 
Moira), was stationed at French Mills from July 8, 1812, to January 8, 
1813. But these pay-rolls are manifestly at fault, for other conclusive 
evidence is to the effect that Captain Tilden and the members of his 
command were made prisoners by the British on November 23, 1812, and 
taken to Montreal. The fact probably is that the men continued to be 
carried as in service while they were prisoners, and were so paid, as of 
course they ought to have been. It is amazing that the State archives 
should contain no reference whatever to this incident, inconsequential 
though it may have been, and even more so that the office of the adjutant- 
general at Washington should be equally barren of record regarding it. 

[590] 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 591 

It is to be noted, however, as partial explanation of conditions at Albany 
that a portion of the records that really belong there were transferred 
long ago to Washington, and that all efforts for their recovery have been 
unavailing. What such documents, now at Washington, may contain 
on this point I have been unable to ascertain, notwithstanding repeated 
requests to army headquarters for information before the present war 
activities acquired so much attention. Merely negative replies were 
returned to definite inquiries, and there seemed to be no disposition in 
that quarter to make intelligent searches and accommodate. At the best, 
records were poorly kept, or, rather, were badly neglected, both at Albany 
and Washington in this period, and our United States historians are 
hardly more satisfactory except as to the larger events — a condition 
not especially surprising in view of the fact that there was little in land 
operations in the war of 1812 to excite American interest and pride. 
Upon the other hand, the accounts even of minor movements and unim- 
portant battles are quite fully chronicled and described by Canadian 
authors. 

Fortunately I have been able to gather authoritative data. piecemeal 
concerning events at French Mills during Captain Tilden's service there. 
In the early part of his occupation his men, with those of other com- 
panies, began construction of a block-house at a point near where the 
Presbyterian church now stands. They called it Fort Invincible — an 
absurdly inappropriate name in view of subsequent events. 

At about the same date that Captain Tilden was sent to French Mills, 
a battalion from Essex county, consisting of companies commanded 
respectively by Captain John Eichardson, Captain Sanford and Captain 
Dix, was called out for service along the northern frontier. Major 
Eansom Noble, of Essex, was assigned to the immediate command of 
these three companies and also of Captain Tilden's company. Captain 
Eichardson was stationed at first at Chateaugay, and the other Essex 
companies at Champlain and Mooers. The orders in the case directed 
that a guard of a sergeant, a corporal, and twelve men of Captain Kich- 
ardson's company be stationed "at or near Pomeroy's, and guards at 
different suitable places from thence to and through Chateaugay and 
into Constable." (French Mills was then a part of the town of Con- 
stable, and the two names appear to have been used interchangeably in 
orders.) The orders further directed that "a communication must be 
kept up between the several officers commanding at the several posts or 
stations with that next on either side, from the lake through to Constable, 
and the earliest information given to each other and to the commanding 
officer in case of any appearance of invasion, or of anything essential that 



592 History of Franklin County 

takes place. The troops, it is expected, will be watchful, attentive and 
vigilant in the safety and security of the inhabitants, both in their 
property and in their persons. And it is expected that no wantonness 
or depredations will be committed on our own, or those of the enemy, 
without being compelled by our enemy so to do. * * * The officers 
commanding companies or detachments will keep their men from stroll- 
ing or absenting themselves without permission, and that, it is expected, 
will not often be granted." 

Franklin county had at this time " a committee of safety," of which 
Albon Man, of Constable, was chairman, and Hiram Horton (the elder) 
of Malone, secretary. Even before Captain Eichardson could reach his 
destination, a communication was dispatched to him by Amasa Fairman, 
of Chateaugay — one of the committee — stating that "we have had 
an alarm this (July 13th) evening by some Indians, and they have fired 
our house. I therefore request you to march without delay to our 
assistance." 

On July 18th, General Mooers advised General Noble from Platts- 
burgh, that " from what we learn from the enemy, they will not commit 
depredations on us if we do not upon them," and again, " from the best 
information we have from Canada the Governor will not permit any 
depredations be committed upon our inhabitants." Then, on August 
12th, the commander-in-chief gave orders that ''hostilities are to cease 
[though apparently they had never been begun in this section] between 
us and the British until further orders." 

In August Major Noble was relieved from further service upon his 
own request, though the companies that had been under him remained 
in Franklin county for a time longer, and in September were reinforced 
by two companies from the Troy district, and the entire force here placed 
under the immediate command of Major Guilford D. Young, of Troy. 
A company commanded by Captain Pliny Miller, also from Eensselaer 
county, was added later. Captain Miller became a resident of Har- 
rietstown in 1828, and was a prominent man there for many years. 

On the first of October Major Young led a detachment of five com- 
panies from French Mills as far as the east bank of the St. Eegis river 
for an attack upon a British command stationed at St. Eegis village, 
but, because unable to cross the St. Eegis river, had to return without 
having even alarmed the enemy. Three weeks later the movement was 
repeated, a crossing effected in the vicinity of Hogansburgh, the British 
troop surprised, four of them killed, and the remainder (about forty 
men) made prisoners. Major Young reported officially concerning this 
affair, that it was undertaken because reports had reached him that the 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 593 

British force at St. Regis numbered somewhere between one hundred and 
three hundred men, with expectation of arrival of considerable reinforce- 
ments, and that it contemplated an attack upon French Mills. The 
troops participating were the Troy companies, and Captain Tilden's, 
Captain Miller's, and Captain Richardson's, the latter under com- 
mand of Lieutenant C. McNeil, the captain having resigned because of 
sickness. The departure from French Mills was at eleven o'clock at 
night, " with two days' rations of provisions and double rations of whis- 
key;" the arrival at Gray's Mills (now Hogansburgh) at three-thirty 
the next morning, and there were found a boat, a small canoe, and " two 
cribs of boards." Two companies crossed the river in the boat and canoe, 
and the remainder of the men and the horses on the cribs. At eleven 
o'clock the same morning the expedition was back at French Mills, the 
journey both ways, the engagement and the search for stores all having 
been accomplished in twelve hours. Besides the soldiers captured, two 
batteanx and thirty-six stands of arms were taken. The Americans did 
not have a man hurt, and Major Young's report pronounced the con- 
duct of both officers and men as deserving " the highest encomiums." The 
prisoners were sent to Plattsburgh. William L. Marcy, afterward Gov- 
ernor of the State, was present as a lieutenant in the St. Regis affair, 
and is credited with having captured a stand of colors, the first taken 
in the war. Major Young made much of this capture of a standard, 
having addressed a letter to Governor Tompkins on the subject, reciting 
the particulars of it, and requesting the privilege of calling upon the 
Governor and of presenting the colors to him for deposit " in the execu- 
tive department of the capitol." The Governor graciously consented in a 
very complimentary letter, thanking Major Young and his command for 
" their faithful and meritorious service." But if the Canadian version of 
the capture be credited, it was not much of an exploit, Christie says : " The 
Americans, in plundering the village, found an ensign or union jack in 
the house of the resident interpreter, usually hoisted upon a flagstaff at 
the door of the chief on Sundays and holy days." Thus the capture 
would not be the colors of a troop, but only the flag of private or 
community ownership. 

Just one month later a British force of about one hundred and fifty 
men similarly surprised the American garrison at French Mills, which 
then consisted only of Captain Tilden's company — Major Young and 
the other forces immediately under him having been withdrawn for serv- 
ice elsewhere. Captain Tilden and his men were captured. They were 
the same force, or a part of it, that had captured St. Regis in October. 
Fifty-seven stands of arms were also taken. One American, not a sol- 



594 History of Franklin County 

dier (Thomas Fletcher by name) was fired upon by the attacking force, 
and killed. He had first discharged his own gun from the door of his 
home, but whether in the air or aimed at the enemy is not known. A 
more inexcusable act was the shooting of 'Squire Philemon Berry of 
Westville, of which no mention is made in any of the histories or in the 
official reports, but which is well authenticated by family tradition as 
well as by others still living who had the story from 'Squire Berry him- 
self. When the alarm of the British approach was given 'Squire Berry 
was in a store and his team was hitched under a hotel shed. Running 
to his rig, Mr. Berry headed the horses toward his home, and himself lay 
down in the bottom of the sleigh. The rig soon collided with a stump (I 
think the flight was from Water street up' Center), and Mr. Berry, rais- 
ing his head to ascertain the cause of the stoppage, was shot. Except 
that his head was protected by a fur collar and a fur cap, it is thought 
that the wound must have been fatal. As it was, the bullet hardly more 
than penetrated the skin, but it rendered him unconscious. The British 
left him for dead, and confiscated his team. The bullet was never 
extracted. One family tradition in explanation of 'Squire Berry's pres- 
ence at French Mills on the day in question is that he had driven there 
from Westville with a load of supplies for Captain Tilden's company. 
There were no other casualties. The prisoners were sent to Montreal, 
and about two weeks later were exchanged for the British soldiers who 
had been taken at St. Regis. 

Captain Tilden was reproached for his surrender without having made 
any defense at all, and in some quarters was charged with cowardice 
because of it. The accusation was, I think, unmerited, and it grieved 
him sorely to the day of his death, which occurred at Moira in 1834. 
Whether his course was even an error of judgment is to be doubted. The 
enemy outnumbered him three to one or more, his only defensive work 
was a roofless blockhouse, and reinforcements could not reasonably be 
expected, and the loss of the position was not of great moment, as is 
shown by the fact that the British evinced no disposition whatever to 
hold it. Knowing that resistance could carry no hope of a successful 
issue, but that it would have comprehended the certainty of a useless 
loss of life, as well as of destruction of property, was it unreasonable in 
the commandant to deem a surrender the wiser course? 

From a report of Lieutenant-Colonel Alric Man, dated at Constable 
November 24, 1812, I condense these particulars: At five-thirty o'clock 
of the preceding morning an express from Captain Tilden reached 
Colonel Man, advising him that a body of from three hundred to four 
hundred British and Indians had entered the Salmon river at its mouth, 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 595 

about five miles below French Mills, which place they were on their way 
to attack. Colonel Man dispatched orders immediately to each of the 
several captains in Franklin county to assemble their men and march 
to Captain Tilden's relief, and himself started for French Mills. When 
he had accomplished half of the distance he was informed of the sur- 
render. Continuing, however, he found upon arrival that Captain Tilden 
and his ensign were still there, having been permitted, upon their prom- 
ise to report later at St. Regis, to remain for a few hours to arrange 
business matters. Captain Tilden then told Colonel Man that before 
surrendering he had had an interview with the British commandant, and 
had been shown the latter's force, which he estimated to number three 
hundred or more. The British commandant promised that if Captain 
Tilden surrendered without resistance there should be no violence or 
depredations, but threatened that if he refused the village should be 
burned and the block-house carried by assault. Colonel Man's report 
described this structure as having been so incomplete that it had been 
carried up only a single story, and left without a roof or even a door. 

Colonel Man's report recited further that on his way to French Mills 
he found the highway thronged with men, unorganized and without 
leaders, but armed, who had turned out without having been summoned, 
and, each acting solely upon his own initiative, bound for French Mills 
to take a hand in repelling the invaders. Three hours later there were 
two hundred of these men in Captain Tilden's old camp. The enemy 
remained at French Mills barely three-quarters of an hour. 

The Quebec Mercury of December 1, 1812, contained the following 
dispatch from Montreal under date of November 28th : " On Friday 
last about fifty American (militia) prisoners, with a captain and ensign, 
arrived here from Salmon Eiver. They were taken by surprise by 
Captain Grey's company of the Glengary regiment and a number of 
militia, &c, from the Raisin River. These prisoners are said to be a 
part of the party which assisted in taking Captain McDonald's company 
of voyageurs." The same paper of December 8th had this dispatch, 
also from Montreal, dated December 5th : " Capt. McDonald and Ensign 
Hall, of the company taken at St. Regis, arrived in town on Tuesday 
last. We understand they, with their company, were exchanged for 
Captain Tilden's company, New York militia, taken at Salmon River, 
which were to leave here yesterday." The Mercury quotes also from a 
Troy paper's report of the French Mills affair, which claimed that the 
British force consisted of three hundred regulars and sixty Indians. 
The Troy paper stated, further, that the enemy departed " with destroy- 
ing only the muskets and accoutrements." 



596 History of Franklin County 

A general order issued by Canadian Adjutant-General Edward Baynes 
on November 27th states the strength of the British in this attack as 
one hundred and forty men, and adds : " The attack was conducted 
with great judgment, alertness and spirit. The enemy fled to a block- 
house for protection, but, being completely surrounded, one captain, 
two subalterns and forty-one men, which composed the garrison of this 
post, surrendered prisoners of war. Four batteaux and fifty-seven stand 
of arms were taken. In rendering that praise which is due to the spirit 
and good order with which this service has been performed, his excel- 
lency has the greatest satisfaction in noticing the moderation and dis- 
cipline displayed by the troops, by confining themselves to a just and 
ample retaliation for the attack upon a company of voyageurs at St. 
Regis; and in respecting the persons and property of the inhabitants 
which the events of war had placed at their disposal." 

As already told, Captain Tilden and his men continued to be carried 
on the rolls while they were prisoners as though still in service in the 
field. Most of them were mustered out at once after they had been 
exchanged, but a few were not discharged until a month later — per- 
haps because sickness may have delayed their return or they may have 
separated from the main body on the march. 

Miss Sarah L. Perry, formerly superintendent of Malone's schools, 
and Mrs. S. D. P. Williams (nee Burnham) of Ogdensburg, are grand- 
daughters of Captain Tilden. 

At once following Captain Tilden's capture, a company under the 
command of David Erwin of Constable (seventy men in all) was 
installed as a garrison at French Mills, but was succeeded after about 
two weeks by troops from Columbia county, who remained until the 
following March. These were in turn relieved by Captain Erwin, who, 
through three separate terms of service, continued in command at 
French Mills until the arrival of General Wilkinson's army in November, 
1913. With the exception of the building of the block-house by Captain 
Tilden and others, the erection of an arsenal at Malone, and two block- 
houses at Chate.augay, and except also the two insignificant affairs in 
1812, as just told, there had been no military activities whatever in the 
county, beyond the bringing of arms from Plattsburgh, until General 
Hampton came to Chateaugay and General Wilkinson to French Mills. 

General Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, had been an officer in 
the war of the revolution. He owned three thousand slaves, was the 
richest planter in the south, and was indisposed to brook restraint. He 
was, besides, accused of intemperance. Nominally he was under the 
command of General James Wilkinson, of Kentucky, who also had seen 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 597 

service in the revolutionary war, and whose selection for command on 
the northern frontier is inexplicable. He had been tried by court mar- 
tial only a few years previously upon the double accusation of having 
accepted bribes from Spain and of having conspired with Aaron Bnrr 
to split the Union, and both age and physical infirmity, not to mention 
lack of capacity, unfitted him for responsible service on a frontier where 
hardships were inevitable, and where the rigors of winter must try the 
hardiest physique. The assignment, while carrying opportunities for 
brilliant achievement, unfortunately involved also possibilities of dis- 
astrous failure. General Wilkinson proved equal only to developing and 
reaping the latter. 

In the late summer of 1813 there was agreement both at Washington 
and in the field that there should be a campaign for the capture of 
Montreal, to proceed simultaneously from Sacket Harbor under Gen- 
eral Wilkinson and from Plattsburgh under General Hampton, with 
provision that the two armies should unite at some point in the vicinity 
of Lake St. Francis, and move thence together to the projected destina- 
tion, which was expected to be found weakly defended. Under com- 
petent leadership, and with the movement begun a month earlier and 
carried forward expeditiously, it could probably have succeeded. 

General Hampton advanced from Plattsburgh in September, making, 
first, a fruitless demonstration against Odelltown, near Rouses Point, 
and, retreating thence, proceeded to Chateaugay, where he arrived 
September 25th, with a force of infantry, cavalry and artillery variously 
reported to number from six thousand to seven thousand five hundred 
men. From September 26th to October 4th, the soldiers of his com- 
mand were engaged in improving the road that led to Plattsburgh, so 
that supplies might be forwarded regularly, and also as if even at the 
outset it was contemplated that a good road would be needed for pur- 
poses of retreat. General Hampton established his main encampment 
on the Chateaugay river, north and west of the village, where one of 
his outposts was attacked by a force of three or four hundred British 
or Canadian troops. The casualties were few, and the enemy soon with- 
drew. On October 21st General Hampton began an advance upon 
Canada with his entire army, following the course of the river for a dis- 
tance of something over twenty miles. Near the junction of the Chateau- 
gay with the Outard, on October 26th, he came into touch with the 
enemy, protected by log breastworks and abattis, and whose total strength 
was only about nine hundred. One of the most absurd engagements of 
this or any other war resulted. The Canadians were under command of 
de Salaberry, and broke and fled at the first sight of the Americans, de 



598 History of Franklin County 

Salaberry himself alone standing his ground, and clutching a bugler by 
the collar to restrain him from flight. This bugler was commanded to 
sound the charge, and another officer, hurrying up with reinforcements, 
had the inspiration to scatter his buglers through the forest, with orders 
to sound an advance from various points, while the Indians were incited 
to let loose a series of fiendish yells The bugles and the cries are said 
to have created the impression among General Hampton's men that 
they were confronted by a force of at least ten thousand. The Ameri- 
cans were without competent guides, and one of the columns lost its 
way. In the confusion two bodies of the Americans are said to have 
fired upon each other. After some hours of desultory fighting the 
American army retreated more or less in confusion, and returned to its 
encampment near Chateaugay village. Canadian historians attribute 
to this battle and to that at Chrystler's Farm, which occurred a fort- 
night later, the saving of Montreal, and, indeed, all of Canada from 
conquest. They insist that their victory on the Chateaugay was indis- 
putable and complete, while American writers rather regard it as a 
drawn affair, though Lossing pronounces it a disgrace to the American 
arms. General Hampton's own officers were bitter against him for his 
conduct of the movement and battle, and one of them intimated strongly 
that if he had been competent and sober, the result would have been 
different. A careful reading of the reports on both sides compels the 
conclusion that, the disparity of forces considered, and taking into 
account the demoralized American retreat, and the subsequent retire- 
ment of Hampton to Plattsburgh, the great advantage and the glory 
were all with the enemy. General Hampton himself explained later 
that his movement had no independent object, and that it was intended 
only as a diversion in the interest of General Wilkinson, in order to 
prevent British reinforcements from being sent to the troops that were 
opposing the latter. The Americans left upward of forty dead on the 
field, while of the British only five were killed and twenty wounded and 
missing. A Franklin county company under command of Captain 
David Erwin is said by Hough to have participated in this movement, 
though such representation conflicts with the record of Captain Erwin 
having been at French Mills at that time. 

On November 7th General Hampton was virtually ordered to repair 
to St. Regis with his army, there to join General Wilkinson. He replied 
that his troops were raw, dispirited and sickly, and were themselves 
short of food; and thereupon, on November 11th, the very day that he 
was sorely needed at Chrystler's Farm, he set out for Plattsburgh. 
General Wilkinson complained that had Hampton obeyed orders, a com- 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 599 

plete victory would have been gained at Chrystler's Farm, and that the 
entire success of the campaign against Montreal would have been 
assured. 

As bearing upon General Hampton's representation that his commis- 
sariat was low, Colonel Bissel, from General Wilkinson's army, arrived 
at Chateaugay only four days after the former's departure, finding the 
roads in good condition. General Hampton's quartermaster-general 
testified that he had sufficient supplies, and Major Wadsworth, issuing 
commissary, reported that there were on deposit at Chateaugay forty- 
five days' provision of bread and flour and a considerable quantity of 
salt meats, while in the vicinity there were seven or eight hundred head 
of fat cattle. It would thus seem that jealousy and insubordination must 
have been responsible in very large part for the wretched failure of 
General Hampton to co-operate with General Wilkinson. The former 
quitted the army a little later through resignation. A more appropriate 
retirement, it is thought, would have been by court martial. 

General Wilkinson's own army sailed from Sacket Harbor, nearly 
eight thousand strong, on October 21st,. but, delayed by confusion and 
storms, was until November 2d in reaching Clayton, and it was Novem- 
ber 6th when it arrived at Ogdensburg. Apprehending that his boats 
might be destroyed by British batteries at Prescott, General Wilkinson 
disembarked the troops above Ogdensburg, marching them overland 
around that place, while the boats, unharmed, were run down the river 
by night. Further delays occurred from point to point, a part of the 
army progressing by land on either shore of the river, until on Novem- 
ber 11th one of the columns on the Canadian side was attacked, about 
twenty miles above Cornwall, Ontario, by a British detachment which 
had followed it from the vicinity of Prescott. The American troops 
were under the immediate command of General Boyd, with General 
Leonard Covington, of Maryland, and General Swartwout commanding 
brigades under him. The battle that followed continued for about two 
hours and a half, and has come to be known as that of Chrystler's Farm. 
On the part of the Americans it was a rearguard affair, and on both 
sides it was warmly contested. The American force was reported by 
General Wilkinson not to have exceeded eighteen hundred men, while 
the Canadian writers represent that it was two thousand five hundred 
strong. General Wilkinson, himself sick on a boat at the time, gives 
the British a strength of fifteen to sixteen hundred, but the Canadians 
assert that it was considerably less. Apparently both commands wel- 
comed the approach of night to make an end to the fighting. At the 
very best for the Americans the battle was a drawn one, while all 



600 History of Franklin County 

British and Canadian authors claim that it was an important (indeed, 
almost a decisive) victory for their arms. A dispassionate view rather 
confirms the latter contention. At least, the Americans left a part of 
their wounded on the field, and were glad to take to their boats, while 
the Canadians were too exhausted, and perhaps too doubtful of their 
strength, to attempt pursuit or to venture to harass the American force. 
Moreover, the Americans had three or four thousand additional men 
within call, and, with capable and vigorous leadership, might have 
turned easily the next day upon the enemy, and absolutely have anni- 
hilated them. The British loss was 24 killed and 145 wounded; the 
American, 102 killed and 237 wounded. General Covington was mor- 
tally wounded while leading his men in a charge. Lossing says that he 
died the next day at Barnhart's Island, and another writer that he died 
on a boat on his way down the river. He was buried just outside of the 
block-house, but in 1820 his remains, with those of two other officers, 
were removed to Sacket Harbor, and given reinterment with military 
honors. The block-house at French Mills Avas named Fort Covington, 
in honor of the gallant officer,, and later it was sought to pay further 
tribute to his memory by naming the town itself Covington, but another 
town in the western part of the State having been so called, French 
Mills prefixed the " Fort," and has since been known as Fort Covington. 

A council of war determined the next day after the fight at Chrystler's 
Farm, influenced perhaps by that reverse, but probably more by the 
lateness of the season and by advices that General Hampton had 
abandoned the plan for a junction of his own army with General Wilkin- 
son's, that the campaign against Montreal should be given over, or at 
least deferred, and, proceeding down the river to the mouth of the 
Salmon, ascended that stream to French Mills, where the army went 
into winter quarters. The block-house was strengthened, huts were 
built for the men, and Canadian writers say trees were felled to form an 
dbatiis completely surrounding the place against a possible attack. Not 
improbably another consideration for the decision not to proceed against 
Montreal was the lack of a proper commissariat. At Sacket Harbor 
the stores appear to have been loaded into the boats with entire dis- 
regard for systematic arrangement, and also to have been of a quality 
to endanger the health of the men. In the voyage down the river large 
quantities of supplies were lost, including not only food, but hospital 
necessaries and equipment. 

No clear statement of the number of men that General Wilkinson 
brought to French Mills appears in any of his reports, nor in those of 
the war department. A report by Inspector-General Nicoll indicates the 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 601 

full strength of the command on December 1, 1813, as 8,1-13, though it 
is not certain that this did not include troops remaining at Sachet 
Harbor. General Wilkinson indicated in one requisition for supplies 
that the number at French Mills was about five thousand, and at 
Chateaugay about fifteen hundred. In any case, deductions for 
absentees and the sick reduced the number of effectives to 4,482. 

The personnel of the rank and file is officially stated not to have been 
good, the best class of citizens having generally refused to enlist, so that 
when sickness appeared almost at once after arrival at French Mills it 
extended rapidly and alarmingly. A sufficient number of houses for 
hospital purposes could not be obtained at the cantonment, and the 
general hospital of the army had therefore to be established at Malone. 
The total number reported sick in November was 1,400, on December 
1st 1,767, and on December 31st 2,800. Dr. Eoss, hospital surgeon, 
reported under date of December 8th that the blankets available were 
of inferior quality, and so small that three or four were required to 
make each patient comfortable: that the wine for hospital use was 
adulterated; that the barley, rice, brandy and rum had been lost; that 
for several days the sick had had no bread ; and that oatmeal which had 
been intended for poultices had had to be used for food. The flour on 
hand had become mixed with meal and earth, and was damaged and 
sour, having been made from sprouted wheat. It was suspected also 
that it had been adulterated with gypsum, and was found to be pro- 
ductive of sickness which took the form of paralysis, with dry mortifica- 
tion of the extremities. Eheumatism, pneumonia, dysentery and 
diarrhea were prevalent also. The beef and pork were unsound. Years 
afterward the surgeon-general of the army, in emphasizing the maxim 
that an army moves upon its belly, referred thus to some of the con- 
sequences of these conditions : "As soon as they [the army at French 
Mills] found themselves in the wilderness, without houses or food, they 
not only quitted their posts upon the most trifling pretenses, but many 
who would have faced the enemy with pleasure fled from privation in a 
manner that came little short of desertion." 

A letter written by General AVilkinson soon after his arrival at French 
Mills declared that " the army is now safe from the enemy and snug 
against the weather." Another letter by him says that after having 
himself languished at French Mills for several days be was carried in a 
litter to Malone, where his disease "continued obstinate and acute for 
several weeks," reducing him almost to a skeleton. 

Apparently Malone was not made a post or cantonment, General 
Wilkinson being attended at that point only by a bodyguard. Many of 



602 History of Franklin County 

the sick, however, having been brought to Malone, the academy, the 
arsenal, the hotel of Appleton Foote (located near where the armory 
now stands), and the large building on Catherine street, next south of 
the American House, and then, I think, the residence of Amos Greeno, 
were all converted into hospitals. Conditions attending the sick appear 
to have been horrible. James Mann, of Massachusetts, was the hospital- 
surgeon of General Wilkinson's army, and in 1816 published a volume 
entitled " Medical Sketches of the Campaigns of 1812, 13, 14," a copy 
of which is before me. Dr. Mann states that immediately following the 
arrival of the army at French Mills the weather became, even for this 
latitude, intensely cold, and so continued. Neither the men fit for duty 
nor the sick, with few exceptions, had covering other than tents until 
the first of January, by which time huts and log houses had been erected. 
Dr. Lovell, a regimental surgeon, wrote : " It was impossible for the 
sick to be restored, with nothing to subsist upon except damaged bread." 
In order to assure the sick better housing, as well as to remove them 
farther from possible incursions by the enemy, General Wilkinson had 
promptly established the policy of making Malone his hospital point, 
and to that place were transferred from time to time such of the sick 
as could not be adequately cared for at French Mills. Dr. Mann states 
that the number in hospital at Malone on February 1, 1813, was 250, 
and he reported to General Brown : "All the sick now here are not as 
yet made comfortable. It is my duty further to state that out of the 
number sent yesterday, four literally died with cold; having not a 
sufficient quantity of clothing and blankets to render them, in their 
debilitated condition, comfortably warm. Many of them are destitute 
of apparel. * * * Humanity shudders at the appearance of these 
unfortunate men." Again, on February 4th, Dr. Mann wrote : " The 
regimental surgeons have neglected to send with their sick their bed- 
sacks. All we can procure here have been already issued to the sick 
in the hospitals. Destitute of bed-sacks, the men must suffer extremely 
during the severe weather. Blankets are also wanted. One hundred 
and fifty received from Chateaugay Four Corners have long since been 
issued. Less than three blankets will not render a man sick in hospital 
comfortable. Eighty sick have this day been received." On Februa j 
5th Dr. Mann wrote to General Wilkinson : " During the month of 
January accommodations were provided for about two hundred and 
fifty sick. This number was received and comfortably lodged. The 
second of this month the A. D. Q. M. General at this post was directed 
to make additional provisions for the sick ordered here from the Mills. 
A house capable of receiving one hundred men was procured. Upon the 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 603 

evening of the 4th two hundred men, in addition to those already in 
the general hospital, were sent on. It is impossible to render their 
situation comfortable with the means in our possession. Every house 
in this village which can be procured at this time is appropriated to 
the use of the sick. They may possibly receive four hundred. It is 
not possible to do justice to these unfortunate men, destitute of bed- 
sacks, and wanting additional blankets. These men were sent on with- 
out attendants or nurses, without kettles, pans and cups; destitute of 
even an axe to cut their own wood. It is now understood the sick of 
the army are all on their way to this place. And if information be 
correct, and it is presumed some opinion may be formed from returns 
already received, the number ordered here exceed one thousand. 
* * * Can not some measures be adopted to remedy evils resulting 
from loss of their apparel, whether their wants are the consequence of 
unavoidable casualties, carelessness, knavery or folly? Of the means of 
cleansing such articles of clothing as we have on hand, Ave are destitute ; 
not having a sufficient number of men in health to perform the labor 
of washing." Dr. Mann says further that in removing the sick from 
Malone to Plattsburgh, after the order had come from Washington for 
the abandonment of French Mills and Chateaugay, the line of sleighs 
obtained for the purpose was three days in forming, and that the first 
division arrived at Plattsburgh when the last was starting. It snowed 
or rained throughout the journey, and six men died on the way. Twenty 
were left at Malone, too sick to be moved, and these were captured a 
few days later by the British, but not disturbed beyond being required 
to give their paroles. Notwithstanding the severe conditions that pre- 
vailed, only twenty deaths occurred in the hospitals at Malone between 
January 1st and February 9th. While there has been a more or less 
general impression in Malone that some of the sick suffered from small- 
pox, neither the department records at Washington nor the reports of 
Dr. Mann show a single case of it. It is of interest to note that Dr. 
Mann disapproved very strongly of the use of stimulants in the treat- 
ment of the sick, but that he was an enthusiastic believer in bleeding. 
His book gives numerous instances where eight ounces of blood were 
drawn from a patient on each of three consecutive days. 

The lot on Pearl street now occupied by Cyril Dupree for a planing 
mill was made a burial place for the soldier dead, and within recent 
years parts of skeletons and metal military buttons have been unearthed 
there. 

Toward the end of December General Wilkinson began to gain in 



604 History of Franklin County 

health, and under date of January 8, 1814, he wrote to General Jacoh 
Brown, of Jefferson county, whom he had left in immediate command 
at French Mills, that he should move the next day to Plattsburgh to 
examine the post there; and cautioned him that during his absence he 
should be vigilant and incessantly watchful on all sides to protect his 
post against any attempt by the enemy, and particularly that he take 
care of various communications by way of Trout Eiver, over which an 
approach might be made. General Wilkinson also advised General 
Brown in this letter that on January 17th a British force, with cannon, 
would leave Lachine for Kingston, and suggested attacking when it 
should reach a point about nine miles north of French Mills, which 
point he said could be gained by crossing the St. Lawrence on the ice. 
No interception of this force was attempted. 

General Wilkinson was not altogether candid with General Brown in 
this communication, because it appears from a report made by him to 
the secretary of war a day or two later that his real destination was 
Cohoes, where he went, on his bed in a sleigh, for an interview with 
Governor Tompkins, the purpose of which Avas to urge the Governor to 
send militia early in February to French Mills, to occupy and hold the 
place, as General Wilkinson expected to undertake at that time an 
offensive movement against Canada with his own troops. This con- 
templated movement, he declared to the secretary of war on January 
7th, would be to march on February 3d or 4th " a column of >two thou- 
sand men from Chateaugay " down the Chateaugay river, and thence 
westward to join a like force to be dispatched from Plattsburgh, and 
simultaneously to cross the St. Lawrence on the ice from French Mills 
with four thousand men for a dash upon Cornwall and the capture of 
that place. As showing the vacillation of the man, he reported only 
ten days later that " want of provisions and other circumstances depend- 
ing on the season leave no expectation of being able to take position in 
the enemy's territory, and even menace us with the necessity of a 
retrograde movement." 

Nevertheless, upon his return from Cohoes to Plattsburgh on 
January 26th, he had concluded to burn his boats at French Mills, send 
off his sick and wounded and convalescent to Plattsburgh, and with the 
residue of his army steal a march into Canada, take Prescott by sur- 
prise or storm, and barrack there and at Kingston for the winter. 
That is, he was unable to move twenty miles against unfortified Corn- 
wall, but proposed to proceed in a Canadian winter three times that 
distance and capture a place or two places, both of which were fortified. 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 605 

General Wilkinson even went so far in this apparently insane project 
as to dispatch orders from Plattsburgh to Colonel Bissel at Chateaugay 
and to General Brown at French Mills, the former to hold five hundred 
picked men in readiness to march at a moment's notice for distant 
service, and the latter to be prepared with a few pieces of artillery on 
sleds and one thousand of his best men for the same operation. He 
intended himself to take six hundred men from Plattsburgh in sleighs 
on January 29th or 30th, and without halt, except to change horses (as 
the troops could sleep in the sleighs), to pick up Colonel BissePs force 
and reach French Mills at noon the next day. From there, and while 
his horses were feeding, he would send out a strong force to menace 
Cornwall, and, stepping into the sleighs, would proceed rapidly to 
Prescott, taking it by surprise in the twilight of the next morning, or 
within forty-eight hours of the departure from Plattsburgh. He was 
confident that he could muster five thousand five hundred men fit for 
duty and for the arduousness of this enterprise. 

But peremptory orders came from Washington to abandon French 
Mills by sending General Brown with two thousand men and field and 
battering cannon, via American territory, to Sacket Harbor, and 
General Wilkinson himself to fall back with the residue of his force, 
stores, etc., to Plattsburgh. Of. course these orders had to be obeyed, 
and on February 13th General Brown marched from French Mills with 
a corps of about two thousand men for Sacket Harbor, and at about 
the same time the other troops were withdrawn from there and from 
Chateaugay, and put en route for Plattsburgh. Large stores of pro- 
visions were arriving at this date at Malone and at Hopkinton from 
Plattsburgh and Sacket Harbor, and fourteen hundred barrels of 
pork and beef and one hundred casks were forwarded from French Mills 
to Malone. Sixty tons of damaged hard biscuit were sunk through the 
ice in the river at French Mills, and ten tons were distributed to the 
inhabitants. Nearly all of what was left, a part of which attempt was 
made to secrete, afterward fell into the hands of the British. 

The tenor and substance of other reports and communications of 
local interest by General Wilkinson were : 

An order to reimburse Dr. Albon Man, of Constable, " the sum he 
has paid for leather to make overshoes" for the men at French Mills, 
with entreaty to have the number of such overshoes increased by the 
combined industry of the workmen of the line ; 

A declaration upon receipt of the order for abandoning French Mills 
to the effect that the position was so safe that General Brown desired to 
be attacked by ten thousand men; 



606 History of Franklin County 

A complaint, December 24, 1812, to the secretary of war that the 
troops had only a scanty supply of unwholesome bread, which required 
resort to be had to musty biscuit; that there was a great deficiency and 
a very poor quality of medicines and hospital stores; that the pay of 
the men was in arrears in some cases for four months and in others for 
six months; that winter clothing, including blankets, flannel shirts, 
great coats, socks, woolen caps and mittens were needed — without 
which " we can make no enterprise upon the enemy, nor can the men 
mount guard without exposing their ears, toes and fingers to be frost 
bitten;" and plainly suggesting that operations in the field would not 
be practicable before April. 

Again quoting from Dr. Mann: "On Saturday, the 19th (of Feb- 
ruary), the enemy, hearing that our troops had marched, ventured to 
cross the St. Lawrence with a motley tribe of regulars, provincials and 
a detachment of the devil's own — sedentary militia and their brethren, 
a band of savages. This martial body amused themselves at French 
Mills until one o'clock P. M., and then marched, with eight pieces of 
artillery and two cart loads of congreve rockets. At the fork of the 
roads, eleven miles from the Mills, a detachment was sent off to Malone, 
and the main body passed on to Chateaugay , where it arrived about 
four o'clock in the morning of the 20th. There, it is reported, a scene 
of plunder began which greatly distressed several of the inhabitants, 
and every particle of beef, pork or flour, with every drop of whiskey 
which could be found, was seized on as public property, and carried 
away. By this gleaning, without discrimination between the individual 
and the public, it is believed the enemy carried off between a hundred 
and fifty and two hundred barrels of provisions of all sorts, good and 
bad, public and private." The British at Chateaugay advanced as far 
easterly as the Marble river, and upon their retreat to French Mills 
burned the bridges behind them so as to hamper possible pursuit. It 
is told that teamsters from Lewis and Jefferson counties who had been 
hauling supplies from Sacket Harbor to Malone had been impressed 
by General Wilkinson to transport supplies from Malone and Chateaugay 
to Plattsburgh, and that upon their return to Chateaugay were found, 
to the number of thirty-two, by the British and compelled to haul the 
captured stores to French Mills. 

Hough says that the British detachment that came to Malone num- 
bered twelve hundred regulars and four hundred Canadian militia and 
Indians, and that it arrived toward evening of February 19th. It 
remained in Malone for only two or three days. 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 607 

According to General Mooers, the people of Franklin county had 
pledged themselves at a mass meeting in 1812 to stand shoulder to 
shoulder in defending their homes, but the incursion of the enemy in 
1814 appears to have sapped their courage and persuaded them of their 
weakness, for no resistance was anywhere offered, and on March 25th 
another general meeting of the inhabitants of the county was held at 
Malone, with Hiram Horton as chairman and John H. Eussell as secre- 
tary, which, while still professing to be " ready to shed our blood " in 
the country's defense, yet memorialized the Legislature for protection. 
The original memorial was destroyed in the capitol fire in 1911, but a 
copy of it is given by Hough in his history of St. Lawrence and Frank- 
lin counties. It represented that "many of our good citizens have 
experienced the spoliation of their goods, clothing and provisions, the 
locks of our desks and trunks have been broken, and books sacred and 
profane, valuable papers and money have been taken from them. We 
have escaped massacre and conflagration, but we have witnessed that 
whoever run was stopped by the force of powder and lead, and whoever 
submitted was under the humiliating and mortifying situation of being 
an eye witness to the spoliation of his goods. But this whole country is 
exposed to daily depredations. The barbarous savage may be prowling 
about our dwellings, and in our weak state of defense we must tamely 
submit to every insult and injury. The father experiences, with tenfold 
increase, the anxious solicitude of a parent and husband. The mother 
hugs her infant closer to her breast, contemplating with fear and horror 
the dangers that await her. * * * Why have these calamities hap- 
pened? Has it been the production of General Hampton's letters to 
the secretary of war, degrading the frontier settlements as almost 
improper subjects of protection, that the army should be ordered from 
their strong positions in this county to the villages of Plattsburgh and 
Sacket Harbor? These are strange movements, at a great sacrifice of 
public property, which we are unable to account for. But our situation is 
too dangerous and degrading for us as American citizens to have patience 
to sit peaceably under; and yet to flee our residences would but complete 
the ruin which is already begun. We do further represent that our 
enemies are continually drawing supplies of provisions from our fron- 
tiers, and the majesty of the civil law is trampled under foot, and the 
arm of the magistrate is put forth with little or no effect. Our jail has 
been opened by our enemies, and prisoners set at liberty, and our military 
force is wholly insufficient to render us secure." 

From the fact that there is neither record nor local tradition that 
British troops invaded the county at any time subsequent to the raid 



608 History of Franklin County 

which followed immediately upon the evacuation by General Wilkinson, 
except as they passed hurriedly through the western part on their way 
to Hopkinton two or three weeks later, most of the representations con- 
tained in this memorial would seem to have been based not so much upon 
actual occurrences as upon apprehension of what might be experi- 
enced; though it is, indeed, easily believable that cattle and provisions 
were drawn from the county into Canada, for it was charged at the 
time that residents who had a greed for profitable commerce, regardless 
of its character, did not scruple to establish it with the enemy, and that 
regular smuggling operations out of the country were prosecuted on a 
considerable scale — St. Eegis being generally the point of exportation. 
No attention appears to have been paid by the Legislature to the 
memorial beyond referring it to a special committee, which I find upon 
examination of the Assembly journal for 1814 submitted a report on 
April 6th to the effect that it had no doubt that great distress had been 
created among the inhabitants living near and adjoining the territorial 
line, and more particularly in Franklin county. The committee there- 
fore proposed a bill for the relief of our people, the exact terms of which 
the Assembly journal fails to state, but indicates that it was along lines 
similar to those of a measure passed at the same session for the benefit 
of the inhabitants of the Niagara frontier, and which provided for a 
State loan to these to the amount of fifty thousand dollars. But the 
bill for Franklin county did not pass, though whether it failed because 
of legislative disfavor, or possibly by reason of the memorialists them- 
selves protesting that it was not money that was wanted, but armed men, 
there is no means for determining. At all events, neither was furnished. 



And they called this war ! Surely, if measured by the perfection of 
mechanism and equipment, by the evidences of discipline and military 
skill, by the valor, and by the carnage that has desolated half of Europe 
during the past four years, or even that distinguished the struggle 
between France and Germany in 1870, or that were witnessed in our 
own civil war, it does not deserve the name, but should be classed simply 
as a series of insignificant clashes or skirmishes — a pretense of war and 
a travesty upon it. Our own country had not even one general in 1812 
who was proficient in the science of war, and equal to applying it 
effectually. Canada was no better off, and no draft could be made upon 
Great Britain's home resources and commanders because the mighty effort 
then in progress against Napoleon was taxing the mother country to 



Feaxklix Couxty axd the War of 181:2 609 

the uttermost. Consequently so-called armies were haasdly more than 
assemblages of ill-armed men, half fed, practically destitute of medical 
.supplies and attendance, untrained, without discipline, lacking Bteadiaess 
under tire, and almost without heart in the enterprise, because a large 
part of the people were without sympathy with it. and, generally speaking, 
the better element relusiim to enlist. On land there was no brilliant 
or pronounced success for the American arms except at Xcw Orleans, 
and that battle was fought after peace had been signed. Worse yet, 
the war was bootless of admitted results, the United States having 
gained nothing by it, .since the terms of peace contained no reference 
whatever to any one of the three main grounds that had been assigned 
for declaring war. 

It would be ignoble to regret that the affair was kit a mimicry of 
Mar, with failure to contribute thrilling chapters of military achieve- 
' ment by the American arms, for with it otherwise the suffering and 
sacrifice of life must have been multiplied. Yet it would be the extreme 
of reckless folly to forget or disregard the lessons that it teaches. It 
was solely that, equally with ourselves, the British were completely lack- 
ing well chilled troops, welded into a disciplined force, that saved the 
United States from a humiliating and disastrous issue of the rash adven- 
ture. God grant that pease may continue to be our portion as a nation; 
but unless we prepare ourselves better than it has been our policy 
hitherto to do — better in providing an adequate army, in strengthening 
our defenses, and in assembling a sufficient store of arms and ammuni- 
tion — • God save us if we should be attacked, for Ave would be powerless 
to save ourselves. And let it be borne in mind that miracles of the Old 
Testament order no longer occur, and that providence does not intervene 
in these days for peoples who do nothing to help themselves.* 

Extracts from the Tompkixs Papers 

The voluminous papers of Governor Tompkins contain but few 
references to Franklin county. They are : 

Statement that in 1808 the strength of the brigade composed of 
Clinton, Franklin and Essex county troops was 2()'3, and that in 1813, 
on a war basis, it was 800; 

Suggestion under date of March 31, 1812, to the secretary of war 
that, among other assignments, one of a detachment to be located at 
French Mills was indispensable; 



* It is scarcely necessary to note, that this was written before the United 
States engaged in war with Germany. 

20 



610 History of Franklin County 

Statement to General Dearborn in June, 1812, that the militia assem- 
bled at Plattsburgh and other places on the northern frontier were 
unarmed and unequipped, and that if attacked by the Indians from St. 
Eegis or Caughnawaga they would be as inefficient as so many women; 

Announcement July 6, 1812, that General Mooers intended to equip 
a battalion of four or five hundred men in or near Malone; 

Order under date of June 27, 1812, that Franklin county detachments 
rendezvous and remain at Malone until further orders should be received 
from General Mooers; 

Eeport to General Hull under date of July 8, 1812, that General 
Mooers had advised Governor Tompkins that the inhabitants of Frank- 
lin county, of all parties, had held a meeting, passed patriotic resolu- 
tions, and were determined to remain on the frontier, and to go shoulder 
to shoulder to defend themselves; 

Announcement July 20, 1812, that the Governor was inclined, under the 
powers conferred by an act passed in 1808, to build an arsenal at Malone 
or some other suitable place in Franklin county, with Ebenezer Brown- 
son and Joseph H. Moulton, of Malone, and Gates Hoit, of Chateaugay, 
as commissioners to acquire a site and superintend the work. Accord- 
ingly the Governor authorized James Weston, of Essex county, to pro- 
ceed in the matter, and advanced one thousand dollars to pay for a site, 
plans, etc. ; 

Announcement to General Wright under date of August ,8, 1812, 
that further forces and supplies of arms, etc., would be sent to Clinton 
and Franklin counties within a fortnight; 

Reference in a letter under date of August 12, 1812, to the arsenal 
at Malone as being then in course of construction; 

Order under date of August 12, 1812, placing Major G. D. Young, 
of Troy, in command of detached battalion in Clinton and Franklin 
counties ; 

Announcement in a letter to Gates Hoit under date of September 18, 
1812, that the Governor had furnished Ebenezer Brownson two thousand 
dollars on account for work on the arsenal at Malone, and had made an 
advance to Gates Hoit of three hundred and fifty dollars for expense in 
providing barracks. [It appears that the structures for which the sum 
last mentioned was to pay had already been erected without the Gov- 
ernor's knowledge. There is nothing in the communication revealing 
where these " barracks " were located, but they must have been a block- 
house in the northwestern part of Chateaugay, or possibly the works in 
the northeastern part of that town called " Fort Hickory." — F. J. S.] ; 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 611 

General orders of September 18, 1812, reciting that a number of 
inhabitants in the county of Franklin exempt from military duty had 
associated themselves together as a company, and pledged military 
service in case of invasion or other emergency; and declaring the serv- 
ices of these accepted, and appointing, breveting and assigning Joel 
Amsden to be captain, Gabriel Cornish and Enos "Wood to be lieuten- 
ants, and Aaron Parks to be ensign of said company. [There is no 
record at Albany that this company was ever called into active 
duty.— F. J. S.] ; 

Authorization as commander-in-chief, under date of October 1, 1812, 
of the organization of a company of infantry in the town of Constable, 
to be called the Franklin County Yolunteer Exempts, with David Erwin 
to be captain, William Perry lieutenant, and John Hunsden ensign. 
[This company appears to have had a good deal of service; see preceding 
pages.— F. J. S.] ; 

Estimate under date of November 11, 1812, that there were thirteen 
hundred militia in service in Clinton and Franklin counties; 

Letter announcing transmission on December 8, 1812, of large quan- 
tities of socks, stockings and mittens, contributed by the women of some 
of the Hudson river counties, to Peter Sailly, of Plattsburgh, to be 
distributed by him to the troops at French Mills and elsewhere in the 
North ; 

Notice to the secretary of war under date of February 6, 1813, that 
the last of the militia troops of the North, the detachment at French 
Mills, would be discharged March 8th, and that it would require about 
fifteen thousand dollars to pay them; 

Message to the Legislature at about the same date, announcing that 
orders had been given to issue arms and ammunition, upon the requisi- 
tion of General Mooers, and that the inhabitants of Franklin county had 
been furnished with muskets and ammunition upon the solicitation of 
their committee of safety for their protection against Indian depreda- 
tions. The message refers to a capture of fifty to sixty stands of public 
arms by the British at French Mills (doubtless those lost upon Captain 
Tilden's surrender) as the only arms that had been lost. 

Minor Notes 

Two or three weeks after the invasion of French Mills, Malone and 
Chateaugay, the British made an incursion to Hopkinton, via Moira, 
where a few muskets and some three hundred barrels of flour were 
seized by them. Having no means of transporting so large a quantity 



612 Histoky or Franklin County 

to Canada, a part was destroyed, a part presented to the inhabitants, 
and about one hundred and fifty barrels taken away. 

When French Mills was evacuated by General Brown, the boats that 
had served to transport General Wilkinson's army from Sacket Harbor 
were scuttled and burned to the ice. They numbered three hundred and 
twenty-eight, and here and there along the Salmon river, below Fort 
Covington, may still be found part of wrecks of the barges that were 
thus destroyed. A number were sunk near the mouth of Salmon river, 
and silt lodging against the wrecks formed an island in the course of 
years. It goes by the name of " Gunboat Island." 

Of course the block-house which was built in 1812 could not begin 
to accommodate all of General Brown's army, and he had two other 
encampments, both fortified. One was near the Presbyterian church on 
the east side of the river, and the other on the place formerly owned by 
Hamlet Mears, on the west side, and now owned by Joseph Fay. It is 
about a quarter of a mile south from Chateaugay street. Traces of the 
latter are still easily discernible. The block-house was burned at the 
time of General Brown's evacuation, so as to prevent it falling into the 
hands of the British. A number of interments had been made just out- 
side of its walls of soldiers who had died within it, and a dozen or fif- 
teen years ago excavations in the vicinity resulted in unearthing a num- 
ber of skeletons. 

The entire cost to our government of the expedition from Sacket 
Harbor to French Mills, and the maintenance of the army there and at 
Chateaugay during the winter, is said to have been about eight hundred 
thousand dollars. 

In comparatively recent years the channel of the Salmon river had 
a greater depth than it has at present, and large steamboats ascended 
the river regularly as far as Dundee, Quebec, about half a mile below 
Fort Covington. One of these steamers was the Salaberry. ■ How many 
of the multitude of people who made excursions on it to Cornwall, 
Ontario, and other points, recalled the fact that it was named in honor 
of a Canadian, who, under adverse conditions, gained a signal victory 
over the Americans, outnumbering him five to one, in 1813 ? 

General Jacob Brown's headquarters while he was in command at 
French Mills in 1813 and 1814 were in the building now occupied by 
the Allen S. Matthews store. 

General Wilkinson used for his headquarters while in Malone the 
Ifarison residence, or manor house, on Webster street, which was then 
a beautiful place, with a broad avenue bordered by stately trees leading 






Franklin County and the War of 1812 613 

to it from the street, with fine gardens ami a green-house, ami with a 
care-taker's lodge which served to accommodate the headquarters ^uard. 
The place was suhseqjusnfcly owned by Robert A. Belongs and is now- 
owned and occupied by Ernest Midler.. After General WilMnson's 
departure from Malone in 1S11, a dozen or more muskets were found in 
the cistern, where they had been thrown perhaps by deserters team the 
guard, or by those who [(referred not to be burdened by them on the 
march. 

The lot on Pearl street now occupied by Cyril Dupree for a planing 
mill was made a burial place for the soldier dead of General Wilkinson's 
army, and within recent years parts of skeletons and metal military 
buttons have been unearthed there. Soldiers who died in hospitals on 
the west side of the river were buried, or were supposed to be hurii 
the garden of Dr. Henry S. Waterhouse on Webster street, wdto then 
owned and occupied the place afterward owned for many years by dames 
C. Spencer, and now owned by Miss Lola Sweet and occupied by Samuel 
C. Dudey. Dr. Waterhouse Avas one of the most brilliant and most 
skillful surgeons who ever practiced in ^Northern Xew York, but was 
not regarded as particularly scrupulous. He was drowned something 
like twenty years later in Gulf of Mexico waters. Dr. Waterhouse had 
always a number of young men studying under him, and the bodies of 
some, if not of all, of the soldiers that were sent to his premises for 
interment were buried only in the haymow of his barn, while those of 
others that w r ere actually committed to earth were subsequently exhumed, 
and all dissected in the doctor's study for the benefit of his students. 
It used to be said that even the dead of the. doctor's neighbors were not 
safe from disturbance by him for like purposes. Be that as it may, 
the late Deacon Jehiel Berry, of Malone, wdio as a boy lived with Dr. 
Waterhouse for a time, is responsible for this story : When the British 
forces reached Malone after the withdrawal of G-eneral Wdkinson's 
army, they prosecuted an energetic and generally thorough search for 
stores abandoned by the Americans, and succeeded in locating and seiz- 
ing most of them. A considerable quantity that had been secreted in 
the chambers of Dr. Waterhouse's residence escaped discovery through 
this incident: The outbuildings and the lower part of the house having 
been thoroughly explored, the squad of soldiers proceeded to the upper 
floor, and, finding the first door tried by them loeked. demanded 
the key, which the doctor produced. The door then swung open — 
revealing a skeleton with pistol grasped in its extended hand, ami point- 
ing directly at the searchers, who fled in terror, and did not venture to 



614 History of Franklin County 

return. Thus the provisions in the custody of the doctor were almost, 
or quite, the only ones that were not found and seized. 

The pay drawn by the privates in Captain Tilden's company for serv- 
ice at French Mills from July 8, 1812, to August 15, 1812, was $8.43 
each, or for the full six months from enlistment in July, 1812, to date 
of discharge on January 8, 1813, $40.01 each. The pay of the privates 
who marched to the relief of Plattsburgh, covering a service of from ten 
to twelve days, ranged from $2.66 to $2.93 each. 

Alric Man, of Constable, was the ranking militia officer in Franklin 
county during the war of 1812, at the close of which he was a brigadier- 
general. Thomas Smith, of Chateaugay, was next in rank, and during 
the war was a major. Later he was promoted to a colonelcy. I fail to 
find from the records that either of then drew pay for service except 
for a few clays in September, 1814, wher. they marched with four com- 
panies of Franklin county militia for tbs relief of Plattsburgh when it 
was threatened by a dozen or fifteen thousand British troops under 
General Prevost. McDonough's victory on the lake September 11 com- 
pelled the retirement of Prevost, though not until he had had a sharp 
engagement with the American land forces, in which he was worsted. 
The Franklin county companies did not set out on the march from 
here until the day that the battle was fought, and so, of course, were 
not participants in it. 

The treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, as also that" of 1815, 
fixed the forty-fifth parallel as the boundary line between the United 
States and Canada from Lake Champlain westward to the point where 
it strikes the St. Lawrence river. This agreement was upon the suppo- 
sition, on the part of both Great Britain and the government of the 
United States, that that parallel had been correctly delineated in a sur- 
vey that had been made prior to 1775, when, in fact, such survov had 
been inaccurate. This error and a graver misunderstanding concerning 
the true boundary of the State of Maine Avas a cause of dispute and 
contention between the two governments for nearly sixty years, and 
almost precipitated another war about 1840. In 1842 the Webster- 
Ashburton treaty settled the matter by compromising the Maine claims 
and by making the line as understood in 1783, instead of the true par- 
allel of forty-five, the boundary along New York's northern frontier. 
At Bouses Point the divergence of the boundary line as settled in 1842 
from the forty-fifth parallel is about three-fourths of a mile. Prior to 
this adjustment the fort at Bouses Point, being north of the forty-fifth 
parallel, was by the letter of the treaty of 1783 on Canadian territory, 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 615 

and because so built has derisively been called Fort Blunder. Graham's 
map, showing the line as run prior to 1775 and the boundary as estab- 
lished by the treaty of 1842, is on file in the office of the secretary of 
state at Albany, and is before me as I write this statement. It shows 
the agreed boundary line at Eouses Point three-quarters of a mile north 
of the forty-fifth parallel, and trending thence southerly on a straight 
line to a point just west of the village of Fort Covington, where it coin- 
cides with the parallel, the two proceeding thence as one to the St. Law- 
rence river at St. Eegis. This would naturally be supposed to be con- 
clusive of the matter, but the official report of the boundary commission 
conflicts with the map, and states that the boundary line as fixed in 
1812, and as now monumented, is very far from being a straight line; 
that tw r enty-eight miles west of Eouses Point it crosses the parallel of 
forty-five; and that it then runs to the south of it until it reaches the 
Chateaugay river, where it bends again northward, and, continuing that 
trend, again crosses the parallel (this time to the north of it) at a 
point about four miles east of St. Eegis — proceeding thence a little 
north of west so that at St. Eegis it is one hundred and twenty-five feet 
north of the parallel. The commercial atlasses generally delineate the 
existing boundary in accordance with the commission's report, as here 
outlined, and do not follow the official Graham map. 

William Kingsford in his work, "The History of Canada," says that 
at the time of the war of 1812 there was a military works, called Fort 
Hickory, to the northeast of the village of Chateaugay, on territory 
which the letter of the treaty of 17S3 made within the limits of the 
United States, but which the present boundary puts in Canada. From 
information which I regard as wholly trustworthy I am persuaded that 
Mr. Kingsford is in error in stating that this block-house was on land 
that is now in Canada. Mr. Ezra S. Goodspeed, an elderly and intelli- 
gent resident of Chateaugay, whose memory is accurate as to matters 
within his own recollection, as well as to representations derived from 
others, tells me that Fort Hickory occupied the exact site of the present 
residence of Mr. Herbert T. Earle, four miles northeast from the village 
of Chateaugay, on the so-called " Montreal road," and that this point is 
just about one-half mile south of the boundary line as established in 
1842, and a somewhat greater distance south of the parallel of forty-five. 
Mr. Eobert Sellars, editor of the Huntingdon (limner, and himself the 
author of a local history of decided interest and merit, writes me indirect 
confirmation of this claim, by saying that Fort Hickory was on the farm 
of Major Jacob Smith, a revolutionary soldier, which was indubitably 



616 History of Franklin County 

within the present boundaries of Chateaugay. This farm and block- 
house was occupied during the Avar of 1812 by Samuel C. Hollembeck, 
who was a noted character, and was known commonly as " Old Coger." 
He possessed very great physical strength, was of a fierce temper, pro- 
nounced aggressiveness and undaunted courage. Once during the ; war 
of 1812 three British or Canadian soldiers appeared at the block-house, 
in which Mr. Hollembeck was living alone, and demanded its surrender. 
Mr. Hollembeck drove them off, and literally " held the Fort." He was 
an ardent and intense admirer of General Andrew Jackson, and him- 
self bestowed the name " Fort Hickory " on the block-house, in admira- 
tion of his hero, who was called " Old Hickory." Mr. Hollembeck after- 
ward removed to Malone, and located about three and a half miles west 
of the village. William Hollembeck, a painter, and quite as queer a 
character as the father, was a son; John, Fred, Henry and Will (all 
well known in Malone a generation ago, and now all dead) were grand- 
sons; and Mrs. Leslie Hutchins, of Malone, is a granddaughter. 

Another block-house was erected by Gates Hoit in Chateaugay in 
1812, near the junction of the Marble river with the Chateaugay, at a 
point about three miles north and west of the village. It was occupied 
by American troops at intervals during the war, and was afterward 
burned, the conjecture being that it was set on fire by Canadians. 

Upon the arrival of the British detachment at Malone, in February, 
1811, it was halted near Memorial Park, at the junction of Elm and 
Main streets, where a deputation of Malone's leading citizens waited 
upon the commandant, Colonel Scott, to learn his purposes and to inter- 
cede against any seizure of private property or molestation of individual 
civilians. Satisfactory assurances were given, and the promises thus 
made appear to have been respected except in isolated cases, where indi- 
vidual soldiers made themselves offensive and disturbing without the 
knowledge or approval of their officers. The country from Chateaugay 
to Hopkinton was at the mercy of the British at this time, and, as Mr. 
Sellars of Huntingdon says, it speaks well for the forbearance of their 
officers that they treated the residents humanely.. 

Colonel Scott made his headquarters in Malone at the hotel of Apple- 
ton Foote, which stood on the site of the present armory, at the corner 
of Main and Webster streets, and the camp of the body of his troops- 
was established on Brewster Hill, just west of the village, a point 
admirably chosen for purposes of defense if, by any chance, troops 
bad been sent here by General Wilkinson from Pittsburgh. The 
Indians are said to have burrowed in the snow wherever they chose, and 



Franklin County and the \Vak or 1812 617 

to have slept with no other protection than their blankets. The British 
force remained at Malone for only two days. A detachment to attack 
them is said to have heen started out of Plattsburgh, hut upon receipt 
of information that they had withdrawn from both Malone and Chateau- 
gaj was recalled. It may have been in anticipation of some such demon- 
stration that the British stay in the locality was made so brief. 

The late Henry V. P. Foote, of I [alone, a grandson of Appleton Foote, 
advised me recently, upon information derived from his father, that 
Colonel Scott was a veteran of the Peninsula campaign in Spain under 
"Wellington, and that he lost an arm in that war. 

James B. Spencer, of Fort Covington, was commissioned by President 
Madison, February 1, 1815, a captain in the 29th regiment of infantry, 
regular army. The original commission, framed, which formerly hung 
on the wall of the supervisors' chamber in Malone, is now in the pos- 
session of Mrs. Spencer-Brown. Whether Captain Spencer had Berved 
previously during the war does not appear, but the commission must have 
been a promotion, for Captain Spencer is known to have begun recruit- 
ing at Chateaugay for the company with which he was identified on 
June 2, 1813, while his captain's commission bears date nearly two years 
later. Captain Spencer's recruiting account book shows that nineteen 
members of his command were from Franklin county, and that it par- 
ticipated in the battle of Plattsburgh. These recruits were : Samuel 
Beman, James Baker, Zebulon Baxter, Zodack Martin, Nathaniel Ayres. 
Chateaugay; Thomas Burgess, Jeremiah Hubbard, Joseph Sweetzer, 
Francis Lamore, Ebenezer Moor, Win. Patteson, Eobert Hamilton, 
■Joseph Badrow, Samuel YYheaton, John H. Spring, Batease Baro, 
Samuel Drew. Samuel Moor. Constable; and Jacob Oilman. Malone. 
The term of enlistment was for the duration of the war, and the pay 
of a private was eight dollars per month, with a bounty of two dollars 
additional paid at the time of enlisting. The company was mustered 
out of service in June, 1815, when Captain Spencer turned in " ninety- 
six muskets, complete, eight damaged guns, seventy-two cartridge hexes 
and belts, and five swords and belts, complete." Tinder " mess accounts " 
the book shows that Captain Spencer paid two dollars per gallon for 
molasses, thirty-seven and a half cents per pound each for butter, sugar 
and coffee, and twelve and a half cents for beef. The whiskey that he 
bought cost less per gallon than butter cost per pound. 

An act of Congress passed July 14, 1832, authorized the secretary of 
the treasury to " pay, out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise 
appropriated, the sum of three hundred dollars to Gates lloit, in full of 



618 History of Franklin County 

all claims of said Gates Hoit for secret services rendered by him during 
the late war." 

Captain David Erwin had seen service during the war of the revolu- 
tion, and in his later years was commonly given the complimentary title 
of general. He was elected to the State Senate in 1822, but in 1824, as 
the candidate of the Eepublican party (afterward known as the Demo- 
cratic party) for member of Assembly, was defeated by Asa Hascall. 

General Wilkinson was relieved of command on the northern frontier 
in the spring of 1811, and in 1815 was tried by court martial for his 
conduct of the campaign of 1813. He was acquitted. 

Mr. Sellars's account of General Hampton's engagement with de Sala- 
berry omits some of the dramatic and farcical features attributed to it 
by Christie, Kingsford and others, and gives a more orderly character to 
the retreat of the American army, which he does not assign to defeat, 
but to the fact that General Hampton received on the field a dispatch 
from General Wilkinson to the effect that he had not yet sailed from 
Sacket Harbor, which, of course, made it useless for General Hamp- 
ton to press forward at that time to the St. Lawrence, because he would 
have been without boats, separated by a wilderness from his base of 
supply, and in a country itself incapable of supporting an army. Mr. 
Sellars gives a strength of four thousand men to General Hampton's 
army of invasion, with fifteen hundred militia, who, under no obligation 
to leave their own country, remained south of the border to guard his 
base and protect his lines of communication. A week's time was required 
to complete the retreat to Chateaugay, which Mr. Sellars says was not 
disturbed by the regular British troops, though the Indians did hang 
upon the rear of the column and took an occasional scalp. 

Mr. Sellars states that while General Hampton's army was encamped 
at Chateaugay food had to be drawn for it from Plattsburgh, keeping 
four hundred wagons and one thousand oxen constantly on the road ; and 
tli at even then the supply was often short. 

Concerning the army of General Wilkinson, Mr. Sellars says that 
while the flotilla that transported it required eight days to make eighty 
miles, a log set adrift in the channel would have made the distance of 
itself in a quarter of the time. Mr. Sellars condemns the conduct of 
many of the captains after arrival at French Mills as shameful, saying 
that as deaths and desertions occurred they did not revise their rolls, 
and thus managed to draw pay and rations for the dead and absent — 
pocketing the pay, and by sale converting the rations into cash. He 
savs, further, that after the fi^ht at Chrvstler's not all of the American 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 619 

boats "found moorings in the Salmon river. A few openly rowed to the 
Canadian shore, the soldiers preferring desertion to the hardships before 
them. Worse still was the conduct of many officers, who sold the stores 
on the boats and pocketed the money.''' 

Mr. Sellars is of the opinion that General Wilkinson might easily 
have taken Montreal, even after the defeat at Chrystler's, the city being 
defended only by a " paltry garrison of two hundred sailors and four 
hundred marines, drawn from the fleet at Quebec, and a mob of militia- 
men dragged from their homes by compulsion to shoulder a gun."' 

In August, 1812, the Franklin county committee of safety reported 
to General Mooers that the military supplies received here were damaged. 
One hundred muskets got wet in transit, and had rusted; the cartridges 
were for another make of arms, and would not fit the muskets that had 
been sent; and a good deal of the powder had lost its granulated form 
and caked into a solid mass ; half of the guns were unfit for use because 
out of repair or because the barrels were crooked, or the stocks broken or 
split. It was recommended that David Erwin be employed to repair the 
muskets. General Mooers so ordered, and promised that more guns and 
supplies would be sent here. 

General Mooers reported to Governor Tompkins in July, 1812, that 
of the men sent here from Essex county under Major Noble, a number 
had no blankets, some not a second shirt, and some were without shoes. 

Copies of private letters written from Chateaugay and French Mills 
by Lieutenant Charles McNeil, of Essex, and loaned to me by a relative, 
are racy and interesting. I make random quotations from them : " When 
we first received information that no one of us could leave our post one 
mile, the captain and ensign both concluded to die ; but the ensign has got 
quite well, and we really have hopes of our captain ; he begins to sip 
a little whiskey occasionally." Three weeks later, October 1st: "With 
much reluctance I mention to you the loss of our worthy and highly 
.esteemed captain. His health is such that our commanding general is 
about to discharge him. It spreads a cloud of darkness over Chateaugay. 
* * * I have the pleasure to inform you that a small regiment of 
detached militia is now on the march from Plattsburgh to our assistance 
in this county. Captain (Pliny) Miller has passed on to the militia. His 
company consists of fifty-four good men. * * * In the morning I shall 
form the company, together with some respectable neighbors, and march 
to the spring, half a mile, and fire once by company. The soldiers are 
willing to pay for their cartridges ; the captain is to give them a gallon and 
take his leave." Two weeks later, from French Mills: "I will just 



620 History of Franklin County 

mention to you how the men followed the damnedest woods, and three 
times through the Chateaugay river, up to their arms in water. Not a 
man flinched ; we did not compel them to go ; they volunteered for a 
scout. We board at the Widow Wires with officers of the Troy Invin- 
cibles and Fusileers; we have our board at $2.25 per week. * * * 
We received orders at eight o'clock in the evening to march at seven in 
the morning of the next day, from Chateaugay to this place. Our men 
and their clothes were scattered from Dan to Beersheba. Before six in 
the morning every man was paraded, ready to march, with their bag- 
gage loaded. We came through the same day. The snow is plenty in 
this place about our tents. ! my God ! how the poor boys grumble 
about their rag houses ; only twenty-three blankets for fifty-four men. 
Who would not be a soldier? My tent, or, rather, marquee, is most 
damned cold. I am obliged to stop every few lines and whip my hands." 

Writing October 31st from French Mills, Lieutenant McNeil tells of 
the expedition to St. Begis, and exalts the courage of his command upon 
that occasion, adding that " five thousand such bo} r s would sink the 
whole province of Canada." He adds: "The inhabitants of Canada are 
much displeased with our going into Canada ; they expect they will soon 
have their heads skinned in consequence of it. But one good effect I 
know it had. The St. Begis Indians were all going to the British, and 
within three days after that time they all moved to this place. They 
dare not go back." 

Under date of November 8th Lieutenant McNeil tells of " a wild goose 
chase " on the 3d inst.. when Major Young ordered out the battalion 
upon representation that there was a party of Indians within eight or 
ten miles, stealing and driving off cattle, hogs and sheep. A force of 
about one hundred and twenty soldiers took up the march, expecting 
to find a hundred plunderers. After proceeding four miles a swamp 
was struck and crossed, and then another longer one, in crossing which 
the men -could not see two rods from each other, and in wbich many got 
mired. This second swamp was seven miles through. Then, having 
advanced another mile or two, and having learned from the inhabitants 
that there were no plunderers in the vicinity, and also that the major 
had sent the pack horses to the very place where he had represented that 
the Indians were operating, the other officers became convinced that 
the major was in fact leading them to Baker's, near Montreal, with the 
purpose of taking a fort there, nothwithstanding it was garrisoned by 
two hundred men, with five hundred more within easy call, and Captain 
Eufus Tilden, Captain Pliny Miller and Lieutenant McNeil, with their 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 621 

ensigns, held a council, and determined to proceed no farther. Being 
militia, these troops could not he ordered to service beyond the; frontiers 
of the country. They accordingly went into camp for the night, with- 
out shelter of any kind, except a very few blankets, and with no food 
save a little pork and bread. The next morning they started on their 
return to French Mills without apprising the other companies. These 
latter followed some six hours later, and Major Young was furious at 
having been deserted. Lieutenant McNeil gives no further explanation 
of the affair. Soon afterward his company was transferred to Cham- 
plain, where he died December. 10, 1812. 

Pay-Rolls of Fraxklix Colxty Militta Companies ix tiik wai; 

of IS 12 

The records in the adjutant-general's office at Albany include pay- 
rolls of companies of Franklin county militia that served during the 
war of 1812 under the command of Captain Eufus- Tilden of Moira, 
Captain David Erwin of Constable, Captain Moses Eggleston of 
Chateaugay, and Captain Stephen D. Hickok of Malone. Opposite the 
name of one man in Captain Tilden's company stands the w-ird. 
"deserted." I think that the man so marked has no descendants now 7 
living in this comity. His name is omitted in the list that follows. 

While it is surprising and pathetic how in some cases formerly large 
families have become reduced to only one or two representatives, or 
even have become utterly extinct, we still know among us many descend- 
ants of the Franklin county militiamen of 1812-14, and the rosters of 
commands in which they served must be of interest to many of our 
people. It is gratifying to be able to note that, unlike so much of the 
material which composed in part the American army in the war in 
question, Franklin county gave from its very best, so that its robs are 
generally to be admired and respected. The men thus serving were in 
the main of the rugged New England type, and, if it be the fact that 
the chronicles of this struggle carry few instances of brilliant and valor- 
ous service, the omission is not due to any lack of spirit or of compe- 
tence on the part of individuals, but only to the circumstance that 
opportunity was not presented here for making such records. 

The pay-rolls follow: 

CAPTAIN" RUFCS TILDEN'S COMPANY. 

In service at French Mills and as Prisoners from July S. IS] 2, to January 8, 
1813; Strength of Command. G4 men. but not all present at any one Time; 
Pay of Privates up to $41.01 for Continuous Service. 



622 



History of Franklin County 



Captain — Rufus Tilden (discharged December 13, 1812). 

Lieutenant — Moses Eggleston. 

Ensign — Adin Wood. 

Sergeants — James Campbell, Alexander Erwin, David Sayles, Jno. Beaman. 

Corporals — Thomas Burgess, Samuel Heath, Thomas Spencer, Matthew Briggs. 

Fifer — Calvin Chipman. 

Drummer — Ansel Durphy. 

Privates. 



Abraham Atwater 
Nathaniel Ayers 
Samuel Bell 
Jno. Billings 
Josiah Butterfield 
Asa Battles 
Luther Chipman 
Alpheus Chapman 
Robert Chase 
Elijah B. Dennis 
Jonathan Curtis 
Elijah Durphey 
John M. Donald 
John Garra Dennison 
Jonathan R. Esterbrooks 
Lemuel Fox 
Jno. Farnsworth, Jr. 
Ardel Gates 
Stephen Gibbs 
Dave Gibbs 
Jeremiah Hobart 
Robert Huston 
Harmon Harwood 
Jeremiah Hubbard 
Joseph Ives 
David Kelly 



Richard Kidder 
Asa R. Loveland 
Bethel Martin 
Samuel Otis 
Stephen Otis 
David Percy 
Levi Potter 
Waterman Reynolds 
Charles Rowley 
Ebenezer Stinson 
David Sanborn 
Franklin Spencer 
Bostick Squires 
Jno. Stone 
Herman Sperry 
Mainard Shirman 
Ashbel N. Sanford 
Gordon Taylor 
William Thompson 
Daniel Vosburgh 
Elias Watkins 
Porter Wallis 
Reuben Wood 
Nath'l Whipple 
Merrill White 
Jas. Westlake 



CAPTAIN RUFUS TILDEN'S COMPANY. 

Place of Service not Stated, but doubtless on March to Plattsburgh; Term of 
Service September 11, 1814, to September 21, 1814; Pay of Privates from 
$1.33 to $2.93 each. 

Captain — Rufus Tilden. 

Sergeants — Oliver Conger, Charles Stickney, Samuel Wilson, Thomas Spencer, Jr. 

Corporals — John A. Buckland, Isaac Bigelow, Gardiner Dickinson, Ira Potter. 



George Adams 
John Banes 
Liba Barden 
Elisha Bidwell 
Barnabas Barnum 
Joseph Barnes 
Isaac Conger 
Silas Cornish 
William Carpenter 
Reuben Cady 
Cyrus Dyke 
Jamison Dyke 
Reuben Davis 



Privates. 



Enoch Irish 
Orin Lawrence 
Prince Merick 
Jesse Pierce, Jr. 
Thomas Pierce 
Jason Pierce 
Jesse D. Rice 
William Saunders 
Jesse Smith 
James Taylor 
James Willson 
Omer Wood 
John Walter 






Franklin County and the War of 1812 



623 



CAPTAIN DAVID ERWIN'S COMPANY. 

Place of Service French Mills ; Terras of Service Various ; Longest from Novem- 
ber 23. 1812, to December S, 1S12; Pay of Privates from 90 cents to 
$3.56 each. 

Captain — David Erwin. 

Lieutenants — William Perry, Luther Winslow, Chester Fuller. 

Ensign — Aaron Parks. 

Sergeants — Abon Man, Seth Blanchard, Silas Johnson, Ebenezer Brownson. 
Leonard Conant, Oliver Conger. 

Corporals — Nathan Stowers, Reeve Peck, Daniel B. Kingsley. 

Drummer — Ashley Stowers. 

Privates. 



Wolcott Botchford 
Charles Barnes 
Liba Barden 
Jehiel Barnum 
John Barnes 
Jehiel Berry 
Robert Canada 
Nath'l Chase 
Moses Chamberlain 
Silas Cushman 
Silas Cornish 
Nathaniel Curtis 
John Dearborn 
Lemuel Davis 
Daniel Drain 
David Doty 
Joel Dow 
Daniel Fish 
Ebenezer Grover 
Samuel Gott 
Oramel Griffin 
David Gates 
Archibald Harwood 
Zenas Heath 
David Livingston 



Benjamin Lawrence 
Orin Lawrence 
Arthur McMillan 
William Mason 
Sylvester Potter 
John Potter 
Gerardus Richmond 
Jonathan J. Rich 
Samuel Russell 
William Shipman 
Royal Shipman 
John Sanders 
John Sanders, Jr. 
Benjamin Smith 
Brazilla Spears 
Seymour Saxton 
Alanson Saxton 
Lyman Sperry 
Joseph Stafford 
Charles Warner 
Enos Wood 
Ebenezer Wood 
Addison Willson 
Jno. Bryant, Jr. 
Joseph Jones 



Lieutenant — Cone Andrews 



CAVALRY 

Sergeant 



Zerubabel Curtis 



Privates. 



Jno. P. Andrews, 
Benjamin Lovel, 



John Lewis 
Jno. S. Payne 



CAPTAIN DAVID ERWIN'S COMPANY * 

Place of Service French Mills; Terms of Service Covering Three Separate Enlist- 
ments, March 4, 1813, to May 8, 1813, May 9, 1813 to July 31, 1813, and 
August 1, 1813, to November 15, 1813; Pay of Privates for Entire Period 
$68.31. 

Captain — David Erwin. 

Lieutenants — Enos Wood, Thomas Wright. Philip Briant. 

Ensigns — James Campbell, Amaziah Smith. 

* Note. — x\ number of names on this roll are repeated because of changes in 
rank, due to promotions. 



624 



History of Franklin County 



Sergeants — James Campbell, Jno. Thompson, Richmond Kidder, Jno. Saunders,. 

Josiah Butterfield, Amos Chipman, Matthew Briggs. 
Corporals — Josiah Butterfield, Amos Chipman, Jno. Davis, Jno. Spring, Jeremiah 

Hubbard, Asa R. Loveland, Arthur McMillan, William Shipman, William Pease,. 

Arthur McMillan. 
Drummers — Jose'ph Briggs, Averill Dunphey. 
Fifers — Calvin Chipman, Allen Danforth. 



Privates. 



Bazillar Ames 

Samuel Baker 

Thomas Burgess 

Jno. Bryant 

Jno. Billings 

Benj. Bashaw 

James Batthe 

Ephraim Butler 

John L. Brown 

Joseph Bodroe 

John Bodrow 

Geo. H. W. Bryant 

Roger Blann 

Francis Bashaw 

Anthony Bodroe 

Simon Baker 

Fred Berry 

Calvin Butler 

Jacob Chase 

Aaron A. Crippen 

John Cirkey 

Sylvester Chase 

Caleb Douglass 

James Dunphey 

Polite Emlot 

Pruden A. Erwin 

Jonathan R. Esterbrooks 

Jacob Fleming 

Asaph Fuller 

Daniel Fuller 

Ezra Fuller 

Jno. Fuller 

Joseph Gray 

Chas. Gray 

Theodore Gray 

Jno. Gott 

Stephen Gibbs 

Lewis Greeney 

Marcus Harriman 

Robert Hamilton 

Phineas Jones 

John Kork 

John Kelley 

David Livingston 

Loran Lewis 

Joel Leonard 

Asa R. Loveland 

Francis Lemore 

Jno. Miltmore 

Jno. Miltmore, Jr. 



Ebenezer Moon 
Reuben Martin 
Arthur McMillen 
Jas. McMillen 
Allen McLaughlin 
John McLaughlin 
Jno. McLaughlin, Jr. 
Thomas Miltmore 
Samuel Moore 
Peter Osborn 
William Pease 
John Perow 
Henry Pierce 
William Patterson 
Sam'l H. Payne 
Battice Pero 
Periker Polite 
Ebenezer Plant 
Jonathan Rich 
Sam'l Rich 
David Rich 
Jonathan Rich, Jr. 
William Rich 
William Ryan 
Samuel Rogers 
Gerardus Richmond 
Seth F. Richardson 
Ezra Russell 
Gilbert Rouse 
William Shepard 
Benj. Shepard 
Jas. B. Spencer 
Zelah Sinclair 
Seymour Saxton 
Joseph Switzer 
Herman Sperry 
Noble Saxton 
Thomas Sutten 
Alanson Saxton 
Ebenezer Saxton 
William Shipman 
Joseph Spencer 
Reuben D. Tucker 
Wm. Turner 
Jno. Taylor 
Silas Ware 
Silas Weaver 
John Wheeler 
Sam'l Wheaton 



Franklin County and the War of 1812 625 



CAVALRY 

Equipped and employed as guides, videttea and express; allowed 40 cents per 

day each for horses, arms, etc. 
Sergeant — Jno. P. Andrews. 
Privates — Seeley Wheeler, Ezekiel Blanchard. 

CAPTAIN DAVID ERWIN'S COMPANY. 

Place of Service not Stated, but Doubtless on March to Plattsburgh; Term of 
Service September 11, 1814, to September 21, 1814; Pay to Privates $2.93 
Each. 

Captain — David Erwin 
Lieutenant — Joel Amsden. 

Sergeants — Jehicl Rarnum, Alex B. Erwin. 

Corporals — Noble Saxton, Seth Blanchard. 

Privates. 

Elias Wibber Jonathan Bawin 

Allen McLaughlin Elish Allen 

Jonathan Atwater William Thompson 

Gates Hoyt Nathan Beaman 

Nathan Stowers John Vernal 
Joseph Ervin 

Cavalry 

Seeley Wheeler Alpheus Exworth 

Richard Gates 

CAPTAIN MOSES EGGLESTON'S COMPANY. 

Place of Service not Stated, but doubtless on March to Plattsburgh; Term of 
Service September 11, 1814, to September 20, 1814; Pay of Privates $2.66 
Each. 

Captain — Moses Eggleston. 

Lieutenant — Israel Thayer. 

Ensign — Soloman Smith. 

Sergeants — Augustus Douglass, Ephraim Perry, Jr., Simon Hawks, Orra Day. 

Corporals — Lincoln Witherall, Justin Day, Jr. 

Fifer — Samuel Hollembeck. 

Privates. 

Alvin Allen Jacob Phillips 

Abraham Atwater Robert Peircy 

Charles Blake Samuel Peircy 

Zebulon Baxter Garret Peircy 

Samuel Beeman David Peircy 

Warren Bottsford Levi F. Pond 

Jehiel Barnum, Jr. Obed Rust 

Nathaniel Grain Samuel Stoughton 

Nathan G. Douglass James B. Shepard 

Rudolphus Douglass Judatlmn Sherman 

Nathaniel Day Harden H. Soal 

John Day Daniel Vosburgh 

Ira W. Doud Rodney Wing 

Squire M. Hosmer Peter Wright 
Ottis G. Hosmer. 



626 



History of Franklin County 



CAPTAIN STEPHEN D. HICKOK'S COMPANY 
Place of Service not Stated, but Doubtless on March to Plattstogh; Termor 

Service September 11. 1814. to September 20. 1814; Pay of Privates $2.66 

Each. 
Captain — Stephen D. Hickok. 
Lieutenant — Luther Winslow. 
Ensign — Noah Smith. 

Servants — Reeve Peck, David Ransom. Porter Moody. 
Corporals — Cyrus Wilden. Eric Wood. Samuel Hyde. 
Drummer — Jeremiah Conant. 
Filers — i r a Foote. Martin Rice. 



Privates. 



James Brown 
Timothy Bemis 
Ezra Dunning 
Alanson Dimick 
Joseph Dow 
Samuel Dunning 
David Gates 
Benjamin Griffin 
Elisha Haskins 
Elisha W. Lincoln 
William Mason 
Oliver Noes 
Lemuel Parlin 
Isaac Parker 
Chester Russell 
Waterman Reynolds 
Benjamin Smith 



Alanson Saxton 
Sevmour Saxton 
Moses Stratton 
Lyman Sperry 
Bostwick Squire 
Joseph Spencer 
John Simms 
Jonathan Thompson 
Benjamin Wheat 
Nathan White 
Jared Watkins 
John Wheeler 
Alvin Wilden 
Samuel Webb 
Reuben Wood 
Asaph Watkins 
Ebenezer Wood 



CHAPTER XXV 

SCANDALS OF AN EARLY PERIOD 

The embargo and non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812 
were both unpopular and ineffectual. Ill judged, they injured our own 
country far more than its enemies. The product of cowardice, because 
conceived m the belief that we were unequal to coping with either 
France or Great Britain on the sea, and that it was cheaper to sacrifice 
commerce than to protect it and compel respect for our rights by force 
of arms, the first of the embargo acts, recommended by Thomas Jeffer- 
son, was passed in December, 1807. Intended to prevent American 
vessels absolutely from engaging in foreign commerce, Xew England 
shipping interests seemed at first to be the only ones prejudiced by it, 
though it was not long until the farmers were made to feel that it hit 
them hard also. A little more than a year later a supplementary 
embargo was laid, extending the operation of the policy to bays, rivers 
and lakes as well as to the ocean, and a few weeks subsequently" the non- 
intercourse act was passed, with imposition of enormous penalties, fines 
and forfeitures for smuggling either out of or into the United States 
Designed of course solely to injure France and Great Britain, our own 
country was really the only serious sufferer through the operation of the 
.acts. Internal revenue officers were given extraordinary and drastic 
powers for enforcing their provisions, which intensified their unpopu- 
larity, until nullification was not only openly threatened, but actually 
practiced in many localities, and even secession and co-operation with 
Canada and Great Britain was contemplated and advocated, particularlv 
in Xew England. 

Records for Franklin county are not available for establishing how 
extensively, or in what manner, if at all, the embargo was evaded or 
disregarded here. Over in St. Lawrence and Jefferson, however, official 
evidence is extant to prove that operations in defiance of the measure 
were general, systematic and flagrant — proceeding almost to the point 
of open, armed resistance to the internal revenue and militia authorities, 
and at one time involving even officers and privates alike of a detach- 
ment of the regular army that was stationed on the frontier. An official 
communication by an internal revenue officer, dealing with these con- 
ditions, declared that if an armed force were to be sent to Ogdensbure 

[627] 



628 History of Franklin County 

to suppress illegal exportations it must be strong enough to overcome 
both the inhabitants of the locality and the military in garrison there, 
or it would be resisted and itself overwhelmed. 

That astounding condition was due not alone to mercenary motives, 
but to political rancor as well, since sentiment in the northern part of 
the State was antagonistic in considerable measure to our government's 
policies preceding the war, and also to the war itself. 

As we have seen in preceding pages, the manufacture of potash and 
pearlash was the principal industry on this frontier during the early 
years of settlement, with Montreal our only accessible market, and these 
were almost the only commodities then exchangeable for cash, hardly 
anything else except grain at the distilleries being salable except " in 
trade." The normal price for potash preceding the embargo had been 
sixty to eighty dollars per ton, but the embargo had sent it up to three 
hundred dollars and more per ton in Europe, while prices for grain had 
been greatly lessened through enforcement of the same measure. Vast 
tracts of forest were cut solely for the purpose of making potash, and 
highways were broken through the Avilderness in Jefferson county over 
which to haul the stuff to the St. Lawrence, and thence across the river 
on the ice to Canada. Returning, the teams smuggled contraband of 
various sorts, and the routes traversed became thoroughfares. One of 
them was known then and for long afterward as the " embargo road." 

How much Franklin county residents engaged in enterprises of this 
character, no records remain to disclose, nor does local tradition explain 
or suggest; but as the frontier here was less guarded than elsewhere, and 
human nature is very much the same everywhere, it must be assumed 
that our ancestors did not overlook this opportunity of an unexampled 
price for bettering their financial fortunes, and the prohibited traffic 
was doubtless prosecuted in Franklin as well as in Jefferson and St. 
Lawrence. 

Be that as it may, the further charge is of record, but without 
specification of names, that when the war actually began, after years of 
friction and dread apprehension, not a few of Franklin county's resi- 
dents were pronouncedly in sympathy with the Canadians and British, 
and gave them secret and traitorous information of military plans and 
movements of importance. Those who remember the civil war and the 
division of opinion and sympathy that obtained in that trying time, 
though incomprehensible in the anxiety and passion of the day, but 
now better understood and more charitably judged, will not find it 
difficult to understand that such conduct does not need to be believed 



SCANDALS OF AN E.\RLY PERIOD 629 

to have been intended generally as unpatriotic and treasonable. If per- 
haps actuated iu part and in some cases by unscrupulous readim 
commercialize opportunities, it is more agreeable to regard it as having 
developed in greater measure from intense convictions which our own 
government's policies contravened, and which later judgment pro- 
nounces to have been mistaken and unwise. The war of 1812 is not a 
page in our history particularly honorable, nor even glorious exeept on 
the sea. The subject should not be left, however, without minuting the 
fact that whatever of seeming disloyalty existed here, there was mani- 
festation of loyalty, too. General Mooers, then commandant of the 
brigade of militia composed of Essex, Clinton and Franklin county con- 
tingents, was able to report to Governor Tompkins in July, 1812. that 
the inhabitants of Franklin count}', of all parties, had held a meeting, 
passed patriotic resolutions, and were determined to remain on the 
frontier, and to go shoulder to shoulder to defend themselves. If their 
Avords were braver than some of their acts when emergencies presented 
themselves, it is not the first time in history that that has occurred. 

Less may be said in extenuation of the fact that after the war had 
ended vast fraudulent claims for property alleged to have been appro- 
priated by the army of General Wilkinson, and for supplies represented 
to have been destroyed, were presented at Washington, with forged 
vouchers and false affidavits — particularly from Fort Covington. An 
investigation followed, with a humiliating exposure of attempted fraud, 
though in justice it should be added that in some eases at least the 
claimants were in no degree participants, or even cognizant of the 
"raising" of their claims after their preparation and verilieatiou and 
before finding their way to the treasury department. Outside attorneys 
and speculators were in the main at the bottom of the dirty part in the 
business, and by their operations brought not only disgrace upon the 
county, but by involving all claims in a general distrust and discredit 
doubtless caused many deserving cases to be disallowed, and so pre- 
vented recovery for genuine losses. 

It is rather the modern habit to think of old times as the best, with 
stricter and higher standards of official conduct and individual rectitude. 
Possibly that view may be just, by and large, though I doubt it. and 
hold to the belief that not only is politics fairer and cleaner to-day than 
in former times, but that, measured by the number of men in office and 
by the tremendously larger opportunities in the present for defrauding 
the public, the instances of 'misfeasance and dishonesty are Ear fewer 
than formerly. There has just been recited an illustration of almost 



630 History of Franklin County 

an entire community going wrong in a ease where the government's 
needs were great and desperate, with vital national interests in issue, 
and also of a widespread attempt, attended by perjury and forgery, to 
loot the treasury, and without punishment of anybody responsible for 
it. It would be a sorry and untenable thought that these experiences 
could be repeated in like situation in this day. 

A yet more startling record of extensive swindling stains Franklin 
county's annals. To-day I tell it publicly and fully as legislative 
journals and public documents reveal it. Few of the names of those 
implicated are known to this generation, and it can not be realized how 
tender and avoided a subject it used to be. As a lad, having chanced 
to hear or read something bearing upon the wolf-bounty scandals, and 
inquiring of an elder for more particulars, I was rebuked for having 
referred to the matter, and cautioned that there were still among us too 
many respectable descendants of the wolf hunters to make it prudent to 
allude to their operations. 

From 1815 to 1820 the part of bounties paid by the State for noxious 
animals destroyed in Franklin county, according to a report by the 
State comptroller to the Legislature, ranged from about five hundred 
dollars to one thousand dollars per year, but in 1821 they bounded to 
$10,600, and the matter aroused the indignation of honorable men 
throughout the State. Governor Clinton gave it a paragraph in his 
annual message, the comptroller communicated regarding it 'to the 
Legislature, and it was a subject of frequent reference and discussion 
in the Legislature's proceedings. Franklin B. Hough, whose long resi- 
dence in Albany and familiarity witb departmental records there gave 
him exceptional oj^portunities for obtaining first-hand information, 
states in his Gazetteer of New York that the bounties paid in our 
county in the three years 1820, 1821 and 1822 aggregated $55,269, as 
follows: Wolves (929), $51,685; panthers (25), $1,075; foxes (587), 
$1,852,50; bears (93), $243; and smaller animals, $113.50 — which 
was equivalent to $12.50 for every man, woman and child then living 
in the county. 

From Colonial times the State had authorized and paid bounties in 
varying amounts per head for the killing of wolves until the reward 
offered for each full-grown wolf had become twenty dollars, and finally 
forty dollars, payable by the State and county jointly, with the privilege 
to towns to add to that amount at their own cost. I have endeavored to 
verify Dr. Hough's figures, but without success; probably because data 
available in 1850 can not now be located. However, I do find in a 



Scandals of an Early Peeiod 631 

report submitted by the comptroller to the Legislature in 18,22 the 
statement that our board of supervisors at its annual session in 1821 
had audited and approved claims of the character in question to the 
amount of $23,369, of which the State was called upon to contribute 
$10,530, and that subsequent to that session and prior to the date of 
the comptroller's report in 1822 additional like claims had been allowed 
to the total of $8,000. Special committees were appointed by both the 
Senate and Assembly to consider the situation and prepare remedial 
measures. One of these reported that of the large amount paid only a 
very small proportion was borne by resident taxpayers, the greater part 
of the total not assumed by the State having fallen upon non-resident 
land owners. Moreover, the local share appeared to have been taken 
care of, in part at least, by the hunters themselves. Thus it was found 
that in the town of Chateaugay the hunters had deposited with an 
individual in trust one thousand dollars, which sum was to be applied 
by him toward the payment of the taxes of residents. The legislative 
committee naively remarked in its report that it was unable to determine 
whether this procedure was in pursuance of a stipulation on the part 
of the hunters to take such action as compensation to the voters for 
having granted lavish bounties, or was merely a gift in gratitude. 
Surely it must have been the latter, for was not honesty the character- 
istic of former times, and are not men who acquire money, by dubious 
means always eager to part with it without a consideration? It was 
shown in the report, further, that, whereas the clerk of the board of 
supervisors had certified to the comptroller 529 wolves killed, he could 
list only 37G when called upon for a detailed statement. 

Yet again, the comptroller's communication to the Legislature 
declared that while so great a number of wolves had been slaughtered, 
it could not be found that the wolves had killed a single sheep or done 
any damage. Sounds very like retribution reaching Mr. Wolf for 
Inning picked a quarrel with Master Lamb, as told by ^Esop, doesn't it? 

In Malone a special town meeting was called at about this time to 
vote upon the question of repealing the town bounty, and the Franklin 
Telegraph, which was the town's first newspaper, contained both a 
communication and an editorial in opposition to repeal. It was argued 
in both that the vote of the preceding year for a bounty amounted 
practically to a contract with the hunters, and that it could not be 
abrogated except through a breach of good faith. It was urged also 
that the hunters had bought largely of traps, guns and equipment on 
the strength of the offer of a bounty, and that withdrawal thereof would 



632 History of Franklin County 

be virtual confiscation of their investment. It was still further pleaded 
that the payment of wolf bounties helped to bring money into circula- 
tion in a time when it was exceedingly difficult to obtain currency, and, 
anyway, that almost the entire tax paid for wolf bounties was borne by 
the State and by non-residents, the local part not amounting to more 
than one-sixth. 

The consequence of the exposure at Albany was the passage of two 
laws on the subject in 1822. . One reduced the bounties that might be 
offered to ten dollars for a full-grown wolf or five dollars for a whelp ; 
and limited the total expenditure in Franldin county for such bounties 
in any one year to one thousand dollars. If legitimate claims for more 
than that amount should be presented at the rates prescribed, then the 
thousand dollars must be distributed proportionately between the 
claimants. This act further provided greater safeguards against possible 
collusion between the authorities and the hunters, requiring that a 
claimant for a bounty, besides presenting and leaving with a magis- 
trate the head of the animal killed, file an affidavit describing the 
circumstances of the killing; exacted that an assessor, overseer of the 
poor or a commissioner of highways should sit with tbe justice of the 
peace whenever a claim was considered and acted upon ; and commanded 
that the ears of the animal be burned after the case should be disposed 
of. The second law directed the comptroller to withhold payment of 
the State's share of the bounties already allowed by the county 'authori- 
ties until an investigation sbonld bare been made concerning them; 
empowered the Governor to appoint a commission of inquiry, whieh 
was to report in duplicate to the comptroller and to the treasurer of 
Franklin county ; and enjoined the judges of oyer and terminer and of 
general sessions here to charge the grand juries to probe the matter, 
and the district attorney to prosecute all cases of fraud that might be 
established. 

The report of the Governor's commission can not now be found. The 
copy filed with our county treasurer was presumedly burned when other 
records of that official were lost by fire forty years ago, and the copy 
lodged with the comptroller has been mislaid or purloined. Whether 
the report gave names I have no means of knowing: but it is shown by 
a report made by the comptroller himself to the Legislature in 1823 
that it did recite some of the methods employed in the swindle and 
some of the attendant results. Dogs' heads had been made to serve' as 
those of wolves, and in one instance a deer's bead proved sufficient. 
According to the cdmptroller, the commission pronounced $2,505 of the 



Scandals OF ax Early Peeiod 633 

bounties claimed from the State to be "illegal and unfair,*' with $500 
of outstanding certificates partaking of the same character. Inasmuch 
as the State and the county shared equally in paying the bounties, this 
would make the whole fraudulent sum actually proven over $6,000, not 
including the amounts paid by the towns separately; and probably there 
were a good many cases that were not susceptible of clear proof. 

The frauds were greater in Chateaugay than in any other town, with 
Bangor probably ranking second, and Malone not guiltless. In ( 'bateau- 
gay $1,930 of town bounties was held to be "illegal and unfair."' As 
stated by Dr. Hough, the commission added that there were so many 
bounty certificates outstanding that " they served in some measure as 
currency in the county." 

In addition to the practices described in the report of the commis- 
sion, it was told to me in my boyhood that after a hunter had pre- 
sented a wolf's head and a justice had examined it, it would be placed 
upon a table or chair behind the justice while he' was executing his 
certificate, whence a collusive hand would pass it through a window to 
some waiting member of the gang, and that thus a single pate might 
draw a number of bounties through the negligence or connivance of an 
accommodating magistrate. 

To complete the narrative it remains only to be stated as a matter of 
justice to the good j:>eople of the time that the complaint of fraud was 
lodged with the comptroller by Franklin county residents, and was 
backed by affidavits, a procedure which in the circumstances would seem 
to have required no little courage, and which might easily have involved 
personal danger to the affiants if their identity should be discovered. 

The discussion at Albany, followed by investigation and legislation, 
must have " thrown a scare " into the hunters and their accomplices, 
because in the next year the bounties paid were hardly more hundreds 
of dollars than in 1821 they had been tens of thousands. But no one 
was punished criminalhy, nor, so far as I have been able to learn, even 
prosecuted. That impotent conclusion would hardly be possible to-day. 



CHAPTER XXVI 
ARSENAL GREEN, MALONE 



The Story of Acquisition of the Property by the State -The 
Old Arsenal -An Incident of a Political Celebration - 
The Old State Militia, or « Floodwood » and General 
Training Day. 

Local records are barren as regards tins property, and the facts con- 
cerning its conveyance and general history are to be found only in the 
offices of the clerk of Clinton county and of the Secretary of State and 

in the statutes. ... . -. N 

Cone Andrews (the name came afterwards to be written Andrus) 
came to Malone from Vermont in the early years of the last century 
and about 1805 bought from Noah Moody for $459 a tract of fifty-one 
acres, bounded substantially as follows: Beginning in what is now 
Main street, at a point nearly opposite from where Howard avenue 
diverges, running thence westerly to or near the southwest corner erf 
the Howard block; thence northeasterly, following the line of Emi 
street to a point at or near Terrace street, which is easterly from the 
old Whittelsev (now McClary) homestead; thence about twenty-seven 
rods east, which would be near Lawrence avenue; thence southerly to 
Main street; and thence westerly to the place of beginning. Mr. 
Andrews (or Andrus) was the father of William, Lucius, Leonard, 
Albert and George, and was by occupation a farmer and inn-keeper. 

He died about 1821. 

In 1812 Cone Andrews deeded to the people of the State ol flew 
York a tract of land "for this use and purpose and tbis only, viz that 
it shall be appropriated as a public green and parade ground, and that 
no buildings P hereafter are to be erected thereon." The tract m ques- 
tion was bounded: Beginning at the southwesterly corner of the lot 
on which the Elks lodge house stands (then the residence of Dr. Horatio 
Powell, and later of William A. Wheeler) ; running thence southwester y 
on Elm street twelve rods and eighteen links; thence southerly forty 

[634] 



Arsenal Green, Malone 635 

rods; thence east thirteen rods and twenty links; thence northerly fifty 
rods to the place of beginning, containing three acres and thirty-five 
rods. 

Also another parcel, which included at least parts of the lots of the 
late Mrs. S. A. Beman (formerly S. W. Gillett's) and of Notre Dame 
church, containing a trifle over two acres (86 rods) "for the purpose 
of an arsenal and other public buildings being erected thereon." 

Both conveyances were upon the condition that they be received sub- 
ject to any mortgage or mortgages on about one-fourth of an acre on 
the southwesterly side of the Main street frontage of the first described 
piece. The further consideration was " one shilling." As to the mort- 
gages referred to, the record is complicated and obscure. One for 
$113.90, given in 1801, was not cancelled of record until 1827. How 
it was paid or by whom does not appear. Another, running to Cone 
Andrus, was for $1,500, and covered, with other lands, a part of the 
park: it is understood to have been foreclosed in 1815, though the 
record does not so show. A third (not given until 1815, and probably 
growing out of a resale after the foreclosure just referred to) was for 
$1,000, and covered the same part of the park as the Andrus mortgage. 
This third mortgage was foreclosed in 1829, and the lands which°it 
covered were sold shortly afterward to Obadiah T. Hosford. Mr. Hos- 
ford then fenced in the mortgaged part of the park, which consisted of 
a wedge-shaped piece fronting five rods on Main street, running to a 
point twenty-five rods northerly, or beyond the railroad. 

A map attached to the deed given by Cone Andrns to the people of 
the State of New York in 1812 shows that the arsenal lot was contiguous 
to the larger plot or park, so that there was then no lane or driveway 
between the two parcels, as there is at present. So, too, the fact that 
the northeastern corner of the larger tract was coincident with the 
southwestern corner of the Elks or Wheeler lot on Elm street proves that 
there was no lane on that side either. Whether the lanes that now 
exist were taken from the park or from abutting private lands, accurate 
measurement of the present fenced frontages on Main and Elm streets 
would conclusively demonstrate. (Measurement by pacing does make 
the lanes a part of the park.) When, and how, these lanes were created 
I have not been able to ascertain; but it is my conjecture that they were 
arbitrarily laid out or set off, but only by fencing, and not by authority, 
after the sale of the arsenal lot by the State in 1852, when the park was 
first fenced. 

The same day that Mr, Andrus conveyed to the people of the State of 



536 Histoey of Franklin County 

New York, Benjamin Seeley, who at one time had had title to a part 
of the park property, quitclaimed to the State "'all his right, title, 
property and demand " in that parcel. 

Assembly documents for 1835 disclose that a bill for repurchase by 
the State of the part of the park fenced in by Mr. Hosford was referred 
to the commissioners of the land office for a report upon the facts. Ihe 
report recited, after giving the history of the State's acquisition of the 
park and arsenal lot, as above outlined, that by Mr. Hosford s action 
the uniformity of the park had been destroyed to some extent, rendering 
it less suitable for a parade ground;, and placed an estimate ot fifty 
dollars to seventy-five dollars on the value of the piece sold under 
morWe. Thereupon a bill was passed, chap. 179 of the Laws of 
1835* authorizing the commissioners of the land office to appoint one or 
more suitable and competent person or persons to estimate and appraise 
the value of that part of Arsenal Green which had been sold under a 
decree of foreclosure, and providing that when the person or persons 
having the legal title derived from such decree and sale should execute 
to the people of this State a sufficient deed of conveyance of the said lot 
or parcel the treasurer of the State should pay to such grantor the sum 
at which such land should have been so estimated and appraised, lhe 
report of the State comptroller for 1836 carried this entry of payment: 
" Incumbrance on arsenal lot at Malone, $100." _ 

Chapter 269 of the Laws of 1850 authorized the sale of arsenals and 
lots in a number of counties in the State, including that at Malone; 
and it was sold October 9, 1852. to William Andrus for $600 -con- 
veyance being made by the State, however, to Samuel C. Wead, doub- 
les^ by arrangement to that effect between Mr. Andrus and Mr. A\ead 
Mr. Wead sold the lot later to Albert Andrus, who built upon it and 
resided there for several years. 

Chapter 7 of the Laws of 1852 appropriated the proceeds from the 
sale of this property, less $200, to the improvement of the Arsenal 
Green and parade ground/' and authorized the payment of the money 
to Guy Meigs, Samuel C, Wead and Hugh Magill, who were appointed 
commissioners to expend the same in grading and fencing said public 
sreen and parade ground," in setting out trees upon it, and in making 
such watts through it as they might deem proper, provided nothing be 
done to injure the green for the purpose of military parades The act 
further provided that the said Arsenal Green should never be sold for 
private purposes except the same be directed and authorized by an act 
of the Legislature. 



Arsenal Green, Malone 637 



The two hundred dollars reserved out of this appropriation was 
doubtless withheld for use in buying another arsenal lot, in ease the 
State should conclude that one was wanted. The old arsenal budding 
was not torn down for a number of years after its sale, and continued 
to be occupied by the State. In 18G0 the State purchased from S. ('. 
Wead for $300 "for an armory" a lot on the east side of Park street, a 
few rods north of Second street, and continued to hold it, unused, 
until 1873, when the then adjutant-general certified that it was not 
required for military purposes, and it was resold, by authority of Chap. 
717, Laws of 1873 — S. C. Wead being the purchaser, and paying $300 
therefor. 

This act provided, further, that the proceeds of the sale be paid over 
to the trustees of the Village of Malone, "to be expended by them in 
securing and fencing the State grounds in said village."' 



An arsenal was built upon the arsenal lot as early as 1812. It was 
a two-story stone structure, and cost $5,000. In February, 1814, when 
General Wilkinson's evacuation of Malone occurred, after the retreat 
here in October, 1813, from French Mills (Fort Covington) following 
the American defeat at Chrystler's Field, or Farm, Colonel Scott occu- 
pied the town for a part of two days with a British force of about a 
thousand men additional to a smaller number of militia and a body of 
Indian allies. These latter, with some of the more turbulent of the 
militia and regulars, were bent upon destroying the arsenal, and actu- 
ally set fire to it. Representations to Colonel Scott by a number of the 
more prominent residents of Malone, to the effect that destruction of 
the arsenal would be wanton, and not within the practices sanctioned in 
civilized warfare, induced the British commandant to interfere, and the 
building was saved. When it was finally razed, more than forty years 
later, a part of its timbers and stone were purchased by S. W. Gillett, 
and were used in the erection of the dwelling house afterward owned 
and occupied by Mrs. S. A. Beman. 

While the arsenal stood it was used for housing cannon (mainly 
howitzers) and the accoutrements and equipment of the local State 
militia. One of the howitzers went from the arsenal to Chateaugay, and 
another stood or lay for many years at the corner of Main and Clay 
streets in Malone village. My recollection is that the brass six-pounder, 
which served Malone for a long time in the firing of Fourth of July 
salutes and in celebrating political victories, also came from the arsenal 



538 History of Franklin County 

stores. At least it is the fact that this piece was bought from the State 
by citizens of Malone, of whom I remember that the late Francis 1. 
Heath was one. It was afterward confiscated by State authorities upon 
the pretense that its further use would be unsafe; but the men who had 
bouo-ht it and owned it were not consulted or recompensed. 

It may interest younger readers to know that in celebrating the 

Eepublican successes at the October elections in 1872 in Indiana, Ohio 

and Pennsylvania (which virtually assured the re-election of General 

Grant) this field piece was used at an hour long past midnight. It was. 

then standing on the south side of Arsenal Green, and m loading it 

some recklessly jubilant celebrant rammed a stone in it, which a moment 

later crashed through the roof of the house on Park street now owned 

by Stephen M. Howard, and then owned and occupied by Benjamin 

Webster Mr Webster's awakening must certainly have been startling. 

\mon- those engaged in this celebration I recall the names of Wallace 

W King, Sylvester S. Willard, Daniel H. Stanton, Colonel Wm. A. 

Jones, Colonel Birney B. Iveeler, and S. A. Beman, and, I think, H. D. 

Thompson, and myself. John C. Slack was the cannoneer. 



There is no record in the Franklin county clerk's office, nor at Albany, 
that discloses by what process or proceedings the railroad gained its- 
right of way through the park, but it was probably accomplished by 
condemnation under the general railroad law. 



The present generation has little knowledge of early militia con- 
ditions in the country districts, nor can it easily form a true conception 
of them Under the old military law all able-bodied free male white 
citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, with the 
exception of legislators when the Legislature was m session, State 
officers and their deputies and clerks, certain county officials, judges, 
ministers of the gospel, teachers and students, firemen, men who had 
already served four years in the militia, and workers in certain specified 
industries, were subject to military duty. A further exemption, how- 
ever let out those who, " from scruples of conscience shall be averse to 
bearing arms," upon a payment of four dollars. Each captain was 
required to make the enrollment for his own company, the bounds of 
whose district were fixed by some superior officer. The law originally 



Aksenal Green, Malone 639 

required the militia to assemble by companies " in their respective 
beats " on the first Monday of September, and, at a later date, in June 
in every year, "for the purpose of training, disciplining and improving 
in manual exercise," and by regiments or battalions once in each year 
between the first of September and the fifteenth of October; and at 
such other times and places, either by regiments, battalions, companies 
or troops, as should be directed by the proper authority. Xon-commis- 
sioned officers were required in addition to assemble two days succes- 
sively between the first day of June and the first day of September for 
like purposes. It was prohibited to sell or give away on a parade ground 
during a parade "any spirituous liquors, without permission of the 
commanding officer/' Uniforms do not appear to have been prescribed 
for privates, though it was contemplated by the statute that non- 
commissioned officers should uniform and equip themselves, at their own 
expense, with an infantry cap, a tight-bodied blue coat with yellow or 
white metal buttons, a white vest and pantaloons, and black gaiters or 
half-boots. Privates were subject to a fine of two dollars for a failure 
to appear at a parade, and to smaller fines if present without proper 
equipment, including " two spare flints." About 1854 the flint-lock 
muskets were changed to a more modern arm, fitted for the use of per- 
cussion caps. The compensation for military service was an allowance 
or commutation of two days on the highway tax of each man. The law 
appears to have been unpopular, as the Franklin county board of super- 
visors repeatedly memorialized the Legislature for its repeal, and the 
assessors persistently omitted to assess the fifty-cent per capita tax 
which the law required to be laid upon men generally. Thus there were 
no funds provided for payment of the militia, and, in consequence, in a 
number of years after 1850 " general training day " did not amount to 
much. 

But in the years when this event was observed to the extent that the 
law contemplated there would be an assembling in Malone of perhaps 
three hundred to five hundred men, and Arsenal Green would be dotted 
with tents for the accommodation of the members of the regiment or 
battalion, which included at least one troop of cavalry, besides the 
several infantry companies. These men came from all parts of the 
county, and represented' practically every walk and condition of the 
locality's life, and, except the officers, were ununiformed, a part 
unarmed, and nearly all of them undisciplined, raw and awkward in the 
extreme. The officers generally were but little better trained, and the 
movements of the day were largely farcical, and not infrequently 



640 History of Franklin County 

characterized by buffoonery and horse-play. Groups of men to whom 
military duty was distasteful and irksome (usually leading and influen- 
tial citizens, who by intelligence and habits of life were really qualified 
for positions of command) would lose no opportunity for making 
maneuvers confusing and ridiculous. They would conspire to elect 
grotesquely incapable members as corporals and sergeants, thus render- 
ing the authority of these, and their attempted discharge of duty, a 
matter of jest and foolery. 

General training day was more of a holiday and more eagerly antici- 
pated by the public generally than the 4th of July. The number of 
companies of militia that there were in Franklin county no records 
remain to show, but each of the larger towns had at least one or more. 
In Malone there were certainly two in 1855, and at one date or another 
Bangor, Bellmont, Chateaugay, Tort Covington, Moira and Westville 
had at least one each. 

Sidney Hickok, father of Henry H. and uncle of Dr. Horace D., 
Carlos C. Keeler, Samuel S. Clark, Jonathan Stearns and Samuel 
S. C. F. Thorndike, all of Malone; Seneca Sylvester of Fort Covington, 
and Ezra Stiles of Chateaugay were at one or another date colonels of 
the Franklin county battalion or regiment, and Claudius Hutchins of 
Dickinson a lieutenant colonel. Francis D. Flanders, John F. Dim- 
ick, Wade Smith. Enos Wood and George M. Sabin of Malone, Milton 
Heath of Dickinson and James Duane of Duane, were majors — the 
first named having served as paymaster if my memory serves me cor- 
rectly. Horace A. Taylor was, I think, a brigadier general, and of cap- 
tains between 1849 and 1855 there were Abraham Reynolds of Bellmont, 
B. Cartwright of Chateaugay, Claudius Hutchins of Dickinson, Samuel 
Greeno, Charles Durkee, Charles L. Hubbard and Joel J. Seaver of 
Malone, Daniel Taylor of Bangor, and Nelson Wiley of AVestville, and 
doubtless others whose names I am unable to recall. Calvin Skinner 
was surgeon, Sidney P. Bates surgeons mate, Howard E. King quarter- 
master, Wallace AA r . King paymaster, and Wynant P. Williamson, 
George S. Holmes, Henry J. Perrin, all of Malone, Seth Bell and 
Amander Beebe, of Constable, Ira Russell, of Moira, and George J. 
Austin, of Brandon, lieutenants. Unfortunately no official records of 
militia enrollments and commissions appear to have been preserved any- 
where. Certainly there are none in the Adjutant General's office at 
Albany, where, of all places, they ought to be. 

Referring to Captain Reynolds, a man of giant proportions, who was 
known as " the Chateaugay infant," Dr. Bates used to tell the story that 



Arsenal Green, Malone 641 

on one training day. as he was coming into the village from the west, he 
discerned a man in full uniform, with sword drawn, marching np the 
Court House Hill, in the middle of the road, seemingly alone; but that 
upon a nearer approach the doctor discovered that an entire company, in 
douhle file, was marching behind Captain Reynolds, whose huge form 
actually concealed his command, though marching two abreast with a 
space between them. 

The story is told that upon one training day in Malone Colonel Judd 
of Ogdensburg was in attendance and in command, with one part of the 
assembled force on the side of the park north of the railroad, and the 
other on the south 'side. Being himself on the south side, and desiring 
to visit the other division, he rode his horse up the steps of the bridge 
that spanned the railroad, and down the other side. The narrative does 
not seem improbable to the writer, for he once saw Benjamin R. Ray- 
mond, when a boy, ride his horse nearly to the top of the south steps of 
this bridge, and then back down them. 

Older residents of Malone, to whom the training days of what was 
derisively called the " floodwood " are a clear memory, tell me that, 
notwithstanding the law's prohibition against selling or giving away 
spiritous liquors on a parade ground, except with the consent of the 
commandant, the men were not usually compelled to go without stimu- 
lants, for, they say, it was a common occurrence that the entire force 
lined up in column before Hosford's tavern, on the corner where the 
Howard Block now is, each man taking his grog in turn as a matter of 
course; and, if all representations be true, not a few of them managed 
to get more than a single swig apiece from the dipper. 



An act passed in 1917 (Chap. 180) authorized the commissioners 
of the land office to grant the Arsenal Green to the village of Malone 
upon the payment of a nominal consideration, and upon condition that 
whenever the lands conveyed, or any part thereof, shall cease to be used 
for park purposes they shall revert to the people of the State of New 
York. In pursuance of this authorization the conveyance was made a 
few months later, and the title to the property is now in the village of 
Malone. 

21 



CHAPTER XXVII 
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 

The underground railroad had existed for years before it was given 
its name, but without a fixed date of establishment, as its operations 
were begun in a small way simply as scattered and individual under- 
takings, without organization. Association with it involved pitiful 
hardship in many instances, and serious danger in all, for participation 
in its work in any way was a crime under the federal law, punishable by 
heavy fines or imprisonment or both, and even meant death if the 
offender were detected anywhere in the South. As time passed, and the 
growing abuses and cruelties of slavery outraged more and more the 
humane impulses and consciences of men, it came to be worked with 
system and on larger and continually broadening lines. How many 
were connected with it no one ever knew with accuracy, though the 
names of more than three thousand of its workers were gathered and 
listed after slavery had been abolished; and doubtless there were still 
other thousands whose activities and identification with it escaped dis- 
closure. The really flourishing period of the movement was between 1840 
and 1860, but occasion for its continuance having ceased with eman- 
cipation during the civil war its collapse followed naturally. One or 
more of its ramifications extended into Franklin county. 

In the beginning, and for years thereafter, the work of the under- 
ground railroad consisted solely in some courageous and fanatical 
abolitionist now and then giving succor and concealment to a single 
fugitive slave who by chance and good fortune had won his way by 
stealth and in terror out of the South. Then, after a time, a free black 
or eventually a white man of the crusader type and spirit, taking his 
life in his hands, would steal occasionally to a plantation, and unfold 
a method by which a slave or a group of slaves might win their way to 
freedom, or at least to a northern hamlet or city where it was promised 
that they should be aided in further flight. Gradually the blacks came 
to understand that if only they could make their own way out of slave 
territory, help would await them north of Mason and Dixon's line to 
smuggle them into Canada, where pursuit could not reach them. Thou- 
sands thus escaped; no one knows how many. In a single village in 
Canada there was a colony of three thousand of them at one time, and 
in many others there were considerable numbers. 

[642] 



The Underground Railroad 643 

The lines of flight lay principally through Pennsylvania, New York, 
New England, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, literally gridironing the 
country in some sections. Probably the busiest of the primary depots 
in the North was the city of Philadelphia, where the fugitive blacks fore- 
gathered singly and in companies. They came overland on foot, hiding 
by day in cornfields, forests or outbuildings; by shipment in boxes for- 
warded by whatever conveyance could be had, and invoiced as "goods," 
" property," " hams," etc., with consignment to one or another well 
known abolitionist who had been advised in advance to expect the pack- 
ages; and by concealment in the cargoes of vessels sailing under sym- 
pathetic skippers between Southern ports and Philadelphia. Some- 
times, though not often, as many as fifteen or twenty would arrive 
together. From Philadelphia they were sent largely to New York city, 
whence they would continue as opportunity could be made into New 
England or up the Hudson and along into Central or Northern New 
York, though comparatively few took the route to this county. Elmira 
was also an important receiving and distributing point. 

Those connected with the underground railroad who contributed to 
keep it alive, but were not themselves active workers, were known as 
" stockholders ;" those who accompanied and guided the fugitives as " con- 
ductors;" and those who simply harbored and concealed them as 
"station agents." So sceret and furtive was it in its organization and 
operations that often one worker did not know who his associate or 
coadjutor was, the consideration of self -protection moving men to hide 
their identity. Yet it has become known since slavery was abolished 
that one single participant in the business aided three thousand slaves 
to escape, another twenty-five hundred, and others correspondingly 
large numbers. Gerrit Smith was active both as a " stockholder " and 
as a " station agent," and was at no pains to conceal the fact. While 
most of those whom he assisted in one or the other or in both of these 
capacities were directed into Canada via the Central New York and 
Oswego route, it is understood that some were dispatched, first, to the 
negro colony which Mr. Smith had founded at North Elba, or perhaps 
to one or another of the negro families which he had located in the town 
of Franklin. What further disposition was made of them is mainly a 
matter of conjecture, but there can be no reasonable doubt that some of 
them remained permanently at North Elba or in Franklin, while others 
were brought to Malone, and transported thence to Canada. 

It is certain that one line of the underground which was considerably 
used ran to St. Albans, Yt., and that another, less known and not as 



644 History of Frankxjn County 

often employed, eanie to and passed out of Malone, but where the latter 
began and the course that it followed is unknown. It is not conceivable 
that it was an extension of the St. Albans branch, for a fugitive arrived 
at that place would be as near to Canada as if at Malone, and it would 
only jeopardize him unnecessarily to bring him from there here. Never- 
theless, of all of the underground railroad branches that have been 
mapped authoritatively by those who have investigated and made a study 
of the matter, no other is plotted in this vicinity. It seems, therefore, 
that it must be that Malone was a station that was only infrequently 
used, and that the line leading to it was kept with particular secrecy. 
But that there was such a line is not to be questioned, though I have 
succeeded in only a few instances in establishing conclusively its 
existence and use. 

A former Malone resident whose memory extended back to 1845 
stated a few years ago that many of the negroes to whom Gerrit Smith 
deeded homes in the town of Franklin reached their properties via 
Malone, having come here by way of Plattsburgh or Ogdensburg; and 
mingled in the throng, which was composed mainly of free blacks, was 
hid now and then an escaped slave. The late Henry Jones, who was 
sexton of St. Mark's Church for many years and a harness maker, and 
the first Mrs. Jones were in the latter class. Mrs. Jones was a bit 
unbalanced mentally and a good deal of a termagant, who had no inclina- 
tion for a life in the wilderness, and insisted that her grant was to land 
in the village of Malone. The old Miller House, on the site of the 
present Hotel Flanagan, appealed particularly to her fancy, and she 
actually ordered Mr. Miller, the proprietor, out of it, so that she might 
take possession ! After her death Mr. Jones married a Morehouse from 
Franklin — a very different type of woman. 

But Mr. and Mrs. Jones were the only fugitive slaves who risked 
locating in Malone, the others of that class preferring to continue into 
Canada or to lose themselves in the Adirondack forests. Alexander 
Hazard was one of the latter, and lived undisturbed for many years in 
the vicinity of Bloomingdale. John Thomas and Jesse Bunyon were 
two others. Thomas was the grandfather of the second Mrs. Jones. The 
story used to be current in Franklin Falls, Vermontville and Blooming- 
dale that his former master located him, and sent agents to apprehend 
him and return him to slavery; that these actually proceeded as far as 
Franklin Falls on their mission, but that upon being warned there that 
Thomas was armed and would never be taken alive, and that the local 
whites would stand by him, with certainty that some one would be killed, 



The UNnEBGrnouND Railroad 645 

tliey abandoned their purpose, and turned back. Runyon returned to 
the South voluntarily during the civil war. 

Mrs. Horace D. Hickok, foster daughter of Phineas Peck, who had 
a millinery store and residence where the wholesale grocery of A. G. 
Crooks & Co. now is, remembers distinctly that wben a child she v, as 
awakened by voices one night, and that, peering through a stovepipe 
hole, she saw her father and a black man in conversation in the room 
below. The next morning, however, no one was to be seen about the 
house except members of the family, and when Mrs. Hickok questioned 
her father regarding what she had seen and heard in the night he put 
her off. Subsequently she understood that Malone was visited occasion- 
ally now by one and then by another Methodist clergyman ostensibly to 
conduct a church service, or assist at one, but in reality to inform some 
" station agent " here that upon a specified date an escaped slave would 
arrive, to be harbored possibly for a day or two, or perhaps for only a 
few hours, and then, when opportunity could be made, to be hustled into 
Canada. Mr. Peck, until a few months ago living at Bridgton, X. J., 
a nonogenarian, had no recollection in his later years of the incident 
which Mrs. Hickok relates, nor of himself having been an underground 
operator. But such an affair could not fail to leave an ineradicable 
impression on the mind of a child, and I think that there can be no 
mistake in Mrs. Hickok's story. Knowing Mr. Peck as J did, I should 
class him as probably a " station agent " only, and not as a " conductor." 
He was certainly an abolitionist, and of course his disagreement with 
Mrs. Hickok concerning the incident was wholly a failure of memory. 

In a letter a few years ago to the Franklin County Historical Society 
the late Marshall Conant, referring to Jabez Parkhurst, an eminent law- 
yer in his day, residing at Fort Covington, said : " Mr. Parkhurst was 
an ardent abolitionist, and many a runaway slave was harbored and fed 
at his home." I have before me the original record of the organization 
of the Franklin Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, and of its proceedings in 
annual meetings from that date until 1848. Mr. Parkhurst was presi- 
dent of the society for a number of terms, and was the candidate of 
the Liberty party in 1843 for the Assembly — which is sufficient con- 
firmation of Mr. Conant's characterization of him as an abolitionist. 
But his residence was hardly half a mile from the Canadian border, and 
it seems strange that he should have taken the risk of providing refuge 
there for a fugitive when it would have been so easy and apparently so 
much safer simply to have hurried him over the line. Nevertheless, 
David Streeter, now of Chicago and California, but who lived as a boy 



646 History of Franklin County 

on the same street with Mr. Parkhurst, tells me that he remembers dis- 
tinctly that Mr. Parkhurst's home was a refuge for fugitive blacks. 
Mr. Streeter himself saw a number of them there, two or three at a time 
occasionally, and recalls that wagons often rumbled past his home late 
at night, and that when they were heard people commented that a train 
was moving on the underground railroad. Apparently Mr. Parkhurst 
was at little pains to conceal his work. 

Though it is a digression, it is yet worth while to list here the names 
of some of the members of the local anti-slavery society : Jabez Park- 
hurst, Alva Orcutt, George Tobey (the father of Henry M.), Eev. Bliss 
Bitmap, James H. Holland. Tra Spencer, Amasa Townsenrl, Jonathan 
Wallace, Ebenezer Leonard, Sylvester Langdon, Simeon C. Harwood, 
Thomas S. Paddock, Thomas E. Powell, Leonard Conant, Eev. Anthony 
Case, Jehiel Berry, Philip Schoolcraft, Solon Perrin, Timothy Beaman, 
Oliver Wescott, Henry Longley, Milo Hawley, Horace Dickinson, Tru- 
man Bell, Eev. Charles Bowles (himself half negro), Samuel C. Drew, 
Ophir Conant, Eev. Ashbel Parmelee, William Mason, Simeon Bicknell, 
Eev. J. E. Quaw, George A. Cheney, George H. Hutton, Eev. Silas 
Woodruff, Albon H. Hitchcock, Eev. Stephen Paddock, Eev. A. Millar, 
and Eev. Charles Johnson. 

The names George H. Hutton of Malone and George A. Cheney of 
Fort Covington used to be connected with the underground, but whether 
they were among its actual operators I am unable to learn with certainty. 
Doctor Parmelee was quite the stamp of man to have been in the busi- 
ness, reckless of personal risk or consequences, if opportunity offered 
or could be created, and if his conscience so impelled. A son of Mr. 
Cheney, now living at Fon-du-Lac, Wis., writes in reply to my inquiry 
that he does not know that his father " was ever engaged in securing 
freedom to runaway slaves any further than contributing and advising 
with others how such interests could best be prosecuted," adding that 
his father, Jabez Parkhurst and Daniel Xoble were the three principal 
abolitionists of the little village, and bore the stigma of " nigger lovers " 
for quite a long time. " We had a library all of anti-slavery publications 
which were distributed around among the villagers." Mr. Cheney tells 
further of a cartoon which he remembers to have seen, showing a danc- 
ing party composed of both whites and blacks, all mingling on terms of 
equality in a jolly time, and the above names lettered over the heads 
of three whites. It is remembered by a number of people still living 
at Fort Covington that boys used to blacken their faces, and call at 
Mr. Cheney's house at night, supplicating help because they were run- 



The Underground Railroad 647 

away slaves. One of the boys was Allan M. Mears, now of Malone, who 
informs me that Mr. Cheney made no offer to assist him beyond pointing 
out the road that led to Dundee. 

Eev. Stephen Paddock, a local Methodist preacher, who lived about 
where the jail farm is, a mile south of the village, and who died in 
1858, is shown by letters still in possession of his descendants to have 
been a " stockholder " in the underground railroad, and from remarks 
made by him or by Mrs. Paddock, which are remembered only vaguely, 
is believed to have been a " station agent " also. 

Mrs. Marcellus A. Leonard, daughter of Carlos Taylor, who lived just 
north of the Barnard bridge, on the road to Fort Covington, and only 
a mile or so from that militant operator, Major Dimick, remembers that 
when a young child a negro came to her home and begged a night's 
lodging. He had no guide or conductor, and told his story to Mr. 
Taylor privately — ■ the latter refusing to disclose it at the time to his 
family; but it was made known later that the negro was a runaway 
slave, making his way on foot to Canada. He was harbored over night, 
and directed on his way to Fort Covington. 

Major Dimick, who lived nearly two miles north of Malone village, 
in the large house on the top of the hill near the Byron M. Spencer 
farm, on the Fort Covington road, was not only an extreme anti- 
slavery man, but a militant one as well, and his daughter, Mrs. 
Charles Fury, now residing in Westville, remembers clearly more than 
one occasion when an escaped slave was concealed in the cellar of 
the house — sometimes for a few hours, and at others for a day or more. 
Then the major would hitch his horses at midnight to a lumber wagon, 
place the fugitive in it, cover him with hay or straw, and drive him 
safely into Canada. Mrs. Fury was not old enough at the time to be 
informed, or at least does not now recall, how the fugitives reached 
asylum at her father's, though she does recollect that one of them, a man 
of stalwart physique, still bore the marks of a terrible whipping that he 
had received, the welts raised by the lash showing plainly on his back. 
The late Asahel Beebe informed me that he could remember having 
heard Major Dimick, Mason Spencer and John B. Broughton talk over 
some of Major Dimick's experiences as " station agent " and " con- 
ductor " of the underground, and he himself had a vague recollection of 
having seen an escaped slave at the latter's home. 

As having a further bearing upon the probability of escaped slaves 
having found refuge in this locality, it is to be remembered that John 
Brown, the martyr abolitionist, was himself at North Elba for a part 



648 History of Franklin County 

of the time in 1849 and 18-30, and again about 1854. With his fanatical 
interest in the blacks, and his abhorrence of the institution of slavery, 
as well as from references in his own letters to the cause, it is certain 
that he railroaded fugitives this way. Mr. Brown was at Dickinson 
Center on one occasion in the fifties, and there discussed the slave ques- 
tion and his plans with Warren Ives. While nothing is known to me 
relative to this visit other than the bare fact, it would not be surprising 
if some of the runaways were routed through Dickinson. 

It is greatly to be regretted that the definite information which might 
so easily have been gathered fifty years ago concerning this movement 
in this section was not assembled and made a matter of record. Now 
there is no one living who knew the facts to recite them except in a 
fragmentary way, and a part of the interesting story must be merely 
conjecture. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT 

In few respects., perhaps in none, have there been greater and more 
striking material changes in Franklin county during something more 
than a century than in the facilities for travel and transportation The 
first settler ploughed his way on foot along a hardly distinguishable sur- 
veyor s trail for forty miles, his scant outfit laden on two steers and an 
ox, himself backing his son, and his wife following with a babe in her 
arms. Nearly six days were required for the journey. Five years later 
an immigrant bound for Canton found on reaching the eastern border 
ol Malone that from there westward the forest was unbroken, and was 
constrained to detour to the St. Lawrence, whence the journey was fin- 
ished by boat. Even as late as twenty years after the first home was 
built m Chateaugay the grandfather of the late Clark J. Lawrence was 
obliged, m going from Moira to Fort Covington in June for a single 
beggarly sack of flour, to make the trip with a yoke of oxen and a sled, 
because the road was impassable for wheels. It took two days of 
laborious discomfort to cover the distance which now, in an exigency 
might be traversed in an hour or two in luxurious ease. Twenty°years 
later still complaints were frequent that newspapers and other mail were 
from six to eleven days in reaching Malone from Albany, and even as 
recently as 1857 we read that it took three weeks to get a letter and 
reply between Malone and Duane, and that Malone newspapers were 
two weeks m reaching subscribers at Saranac Lake. Indeed it is not 
yet a quarter of a century since it was an all-day drive with good horses 
over poor roads from the county seat to the Adirondack metropolis 
which is now accessible by rail or motor car in a couple of hours 
• The story of the development of these and other changed conditions 
ot travel and traffic will bear recital in something of detail because it is 
explanatory of our growth and progress along material lines and 
involves the chronicle of highway building and railway construction 
which have linked the towns of the county and provided outlets to the 
centers and markets of the world. 

Isolated as the pioneers were, they had at first to procure from Platts- 
burgh all supplies that the forests, the waters and the farms could not 
afford — which m the beginning meant giving a week's time of man 
and oxen m order to obtain an insignificant lot of stores, for no one 

[649] 



650 History of Franklin County 

had the means which would have enabled him to lay in large quanti- 
ties even had the roads been such as to admit of hauling heavy loads. 
Effort was accordingly directed early to secure the opening of avenues 
of communication. For years the only mail service was by carriers who 
made their rounds on foot and then on horseback, and highways, even 
of the roughest, came slowly. But the tide of immigration from New 
En-land to our county and St. Lawrence, becoming considerable in the 
early years of the century, a highway of a sort was cut through Malone 
and on into Lawrence and beyond. Some conception of its character 
may be imagined from a reference to it by Judge Ford of Ogdensburg 
in a letter in which he was pleading for a road to connect his city with 
Central New York and Albany. He sneered that it scarcely deserved 
the name of an apology for a road, and added that if his proposed high- 
way were built the Chateaugay road would yet be "good enough for 
any use that will be made of it." We may derive still further idea of 
what roads must have been in that time from an additional statement 
by Judge Ford, to the effect that he had just let a contract for the build- 
ing of one through a forest section at the price of sixteen dollars a mile, 
or hardly more than a thousandth part of what the State pays to-day 
per mile for work in open country, with grading already accomplished . 
Of course the countrv was extremely poor a hundred years ago, and 
aid in road building had to be sought by localities from the State and 
was given often upon the grounds that considerations for public defense 
and of facilitating possible military operations along the frontier 
required their construction and maintenance. 

Chapter 124 of the laws of 1810 incorporated the St. Lawrence Turn- 
pike Company, to build a road from Black river in Jefferson county to 
Malone, but the companv was subsequently released from obligation to 
proceed farther east than Bangor. The act authorized toll-gates to be 
established every ten miles and the rates and terms for tolls as laid down 
in the charter ranged from six cents to twenty-five cents, according to 
the character of conveyance or the number of cattle or sheep to pass, 
but none was to be collected from any one living within a mile ot the 
aate through which he might desire to proceed, nor from any one going 
to or returning from worship or a funeral, from a court which he might 
be required to attend as a juror or a witness, from an election at which 
he was a voter, from grist-mill or blacksmith shop, from summoning 
a physician or midwife, or from performance of military duty on train- 
ing day The diary of a Hopkinton resident carries the entry that a 
road which became a section of this turnpike was cut through that town 



Transportation Development 651 

to Dickinson between 1807 and 1S09. The charter was subsequently 
repealed, and the turnpike declared a public highway 

Chapter 177 of the Laws of 1810, after reciting that owners of lands 
had cut at their own expense a road from Hopkinton to the west line of 
the Old Military Tract (i. ,, to the western border of the town of 
Franklin), and that it had become impassable by reason of fallen trees 
and bridges carried off, appointed a commissioner to cause it to be 
repaired, and authorized him to raise by tax for that purpose not to 
exceed seventy-five dollars in each town traversed by it. Chapter 170 
of the laws of 1812 appropriated a thousand dollars from the State 
treasury to rebuild a bridge on the same road which had been destroved 
by high water, and Chapter 196 of the same year provided for levying 
and collecting a tax on adjacent wild lands, besides appropriate three 
housand dollars of State money for completing and improving the road. 
In 1816 the Legislature granted four thousand dollars additional to the 
project and m 1821 passed an act authorizing commissioners to assess 
every free male inhabitant living thereon, between Saranac river and 
Meacham lake, not to exceed ten days' work in each year. This is the 
road known as the Northwest Bay road, extending from the bay of that 
name on Lake Champlain at Westport through Essex county to Franklin 

°C J n 72 aC T thG t0VV11S ° f Ha ™tstown, Brighton, Duane, 

Santa Clara and Waverly to Hopkinton, St. Lawrence county. It is said 
to have been the first route for regular stage-coach service into and 
through Franklin county, and local belief is tenacious that formerly it 
was a military road, built or at least worked to a considerable extent by 
soldiers during the war of 1812. A friend who is an unusually competent 
delver into such matters, and who tried to establish the truth or falsity 
of foundation for that belief, has submitted to me his correspondence on 
the subject with the offices of the secretary of State and the adjutant 
general both at Washington and at Albany, and there is nowhere «a 

ZZfjTC T tal ? iDg thG PreVdent l0Cal °P inion - U P° n kq*iry 
myself a Washington I am advised, further, that there is no record in 

the war department showing this road to have been used by troops at all 
during the war of 1812, though records do prove that military organiza- 
tions moved through Hopkinton to Sacket Harbor from Pittsburgh, 
but having made the trip from the latter place via Chateaugav. It is of 
course difficult to reconcile this record with the facts that parts of aims 
bayonets canteens and canister shot have been found in recent years at 
points along this highway in the town of Santa Clara, together with the 
presence of graves at Jennings clearing which antedate any known settle- 



652 History of Franklin County 

ment in that vicinity ; but may it not be possible that Sir John Johnston 
crossed this route during the war of the revolution in his flight from 
Central New York to Canada, and that the relics and the graves referred 
to may have originated with that movement instead of dating from the 
war of 1812 ? The Northwest Bay road was for long in practical disuse 
over a considerable part of its course, but is now to become again a 
thoroughfare. In 1914 a few miles at its western end were converted into 
a State highway at probably a greater cost than that for construction of 
its entire length in early days. This improvement is scheduled to be 
continued from a mile or two south of St. Eegis Falls to Everton, and 
thence to a junction near Lake Meacham with the county highway that 
leads to Paul Smiths and Saranac Lake. It will then be a far better 
highway than its projectors ever dreamed for it, and will be more 
traveled than it ever was in the past. 

The first State recognition of the military road ' ; from Plattsburgh 
to the east line of Franklin county'"' appears to have been given in 1811, 
when an act was passed directing the managers of the lottery for the 
purchase of the Botanic Gardens to raise an additional five thousand 
dollars and pay the same into the State treasury, which should in turn 
pay it over to commissioners for improving this highway. In 1812 a 
supplementary act, reciting that the drawing of the lottery could not be 
had for some time, directed that the five thousand dollars be. advanced 
by the State treasurer, to be repaid when the drawing should occur. In 
the meantime Franklin and Clinton counties were to pay one hundred 
and fifty dollars each as interest on the sum so advanced, and the super- 
visors of the two counties were authorized to raise by tax seven hundred 
and fifty dollars for each county for two years, to be applied on the work. 
(It is to be observed that while the improvement was to stop at Clin- 
ton's western border, Franklin was nevertheless to be permitted to share 
equally in defraying the cost. Clinton was always a canny lot.) The 
act in question recited further that the road had become impassable at 
certain seasons, and was at all times dangerous. In addition to the 
help thus extended by the State, General Hampton's troops worked on 
the road easterly from Chateaugay upon arrival at that place in 1813, 
and one of bis officers reported officially that he bad made it " a perfect 
turnpike." If this were true, such condition could not have long con- 
tinued, because in his journey through Northern New York in 1817 
President Monroe found the road so execrable that upon his return to 
"Washington orders were issued to the soldiers in garrison at Platts- 
burgh to proceed to work upon it, for which service the men were allowed 



Transportation Development 653 

a gill of whiskey each per day and fifteen cents per day per man in 
addition to their regular pay. But even this work was insufficient to 
make it a good road, and a State law of 1822 authorized and directed 
he supervisors of Clinton and Franklin to raise bv tax i„ that vear and 
he next the sum of three thousand five hundred dollars for its" comple- 
tion but again only to the east line of the county of Franklin, and 
granted State aid to an equal amount. In 1823 it was made a toll 
road, the tolls collected to be used in keeping it in repair. In 1829 an 
act authorized the Franklin county supervisors to assess and collect in 
the years 1830-31 such sum not exceeding two thousand dollars m the 
towns of Malone and Chateaugay as might be necessary for improW 
that part of the road which lies in Chateaugay. In" 1843 the State 
authorized a part of the money raised for the road to be applied to build- 
ing a bridge over the Chateaugay river - presumably the old covered 
bridge. Soon after the close of the war of 1812 this highway became 
a stage route, with regular mail service from Plattsburgh through to 
Ogdensburg, and was so continued until the Eutland Railroad (orig- 
inally called the Northern and then the Ogdensburg and Lake Cham- 
plain) was built. Even later than that, because the post-office depart- 
ment would not pay the railroad anything like the rate that it allowed 
to other railroads for like service, stages were again called into use for 
mail carrying. The coaches were of the old regulation stvle, with 
thoroughbraces for springs, and were drawn by four horses.' Horses 
were changed every ten or twelve miles, and arrival at stopping places 
always made on a run and with horn sounding, was an event in the life of 
a community. Local newspapers were almost unknown, and postal rates, 
were high, so that the stage was relied upon for news from the outside 
world Hotels multiplied all along the line -which in this county west 
from Malone was at first through Bangor and Dickinson, but afterward 
through North Bangor and Moira-and a considerable impetus was 
given by travel and immigration to business locally. Most of the stage 
mns went into disuse as such long ago. One of the early owners and 
drivers of these stages was Jonathan Thompson (grandfather of the 
late II. Deforest), who started the business with a single horse and a 
saddle, and when he sold to William Andrus had a hundred horses 
employed Inferior stage lines radiated from the trunk at principal 
points, of which now and then one is still in operation. One of them 
in Mr. Thompson's time extended from Chateaugay to Fort Cbrartw 
Chapter 287 of the laws of 1827 appointed commissioners to law out 
a route for a road from Hopkmton to Lake Champlain. Thcv rented 



654 History of Franklin County 

that four different routes had been surveyed, and agreed in recom- 
mending as the most feasible that which came to be known as the Hop- 
kinton and Port Kent turnpike, having its western terminus at the place 
first named, and its eastern at Port Kent on Lake Champlain, in Essex 
county. It runs through the town of Dickinson, a mile or two north 
of St. Eegis Falls, crosses Santa Clara and Duane in a generally easterly 
direction, and then swings through Franklin by way of Loon Lake, 
Hunters' Home, Merrillsville and Alder Brook into and across Essex 
county. The commissioners found its length as proposed seventy-four 
and one-half miles, of which over fifty miles lay through an unbroken 
forest. Chapter 165, laws of 1829, appropriated $25,836 of State money 
for building it, and authorized the commissioners to assess a tax on 
adjacent lands to the amount of $12,500 additional. It was made a 
toll road. In 1831 the State loaned Clinton county $9,500, of which 
$5,000 was to be expended in building a road from Plattsburgh by way 
of Redford and Goldsmiths to intercept the Hopkinton and Port Kent 
turnpike at Loon Lake, and in 1832 the Legislature gave $3,000 for 
completing it. An act of 1838 directed town highway commissioners to 
keep the Hopkinton and Port Kent turnpike in repair notwithstanding 
it was a toll road. 

Altamont has a so-called " military road ", the history of which is 
obscure and uncertain. My conjecture is that it is a part of a highway 
authorized by the Legislature in 1810 to be built from Canton in St. 
Lawrence county to Chester in Essex county. It is not shown by any 
map in the State engineer's office, and was utterly abandoned after a 
few years. " 'Twere idle waste of time to guess whence came, or 
whither gone." 

These several enterprises, with the construction of the many laterals 
at the cost entirely of the towns or of individuals, were a tax upon the 
small and poor population heavier and more burdensome than we of 
more fortunate times and larger resources can easily realize ; but, though 
the improvements gave an immeasurable relief from former conditions, 
still they were felt to be inadequate, and failed to satisfy. The building 
of the Erie and Champlain canals had progressed as our highways were 
somewhat grudgingly authorized and assisted, and the benefits which 
these waterways had brought to the eastern, central and western coun- 
ties were seen to have been marvelous, naturally exciting envy. Thus 
the idea occurred to enterprising men in Northern New York that a 
similar work here would be tremendously helpful; and, chimerical as 
the plan would be deemed to-day, agitation was begun and vigorously 



Transportation Development 655 

.prosecuted for the building of a canal from the St. Lawrence river 
to Lake Champlain, whence by way of the latter water and the Cham- 
pJam canal and the Hudson river a through boat route might be opened 
to Albany and New York. Public meetings were held to arouse popular 
interest and to secure pledges of material aid by individuals, and the 
Legislature was memorialized in 1823 to authorize the undertaking and 
to vote the money for its prosecution. The proposition as it* was 
definitely put forward was for a canal to begin at a point near Ogdens- 
burg and to terminate near Pittsburgh. The petition for it to the 
. Legislature argued that preliminary examinations, already made at 
private expense, justified the belief that the work would not involve 
any special difficulties, and that its cost per mile would not be greater 
than the average per mile cost in building the Erie. The length^of the 
canal was estimated at one hundred and twenty-five miles, and the 
advantages to be derived from it were set forth to be: To make New 
York city instead of Montreal and Quebec the natural market for the 
products of our section ; to foster the potash, pearlash and lumber indus- 
tries of the locality; to induce the development of vast iron deposits; to 
make timber for ship-building accessible, and to create a demand for 
and increase the value of lands owned by the State, as well as to pro- 
vide facilities for inexpensive and expeditious transportation of troops 
and military supplies in the event of another war with Great Britain. 
President Monroe commended the project on the latter ground to the 
favorable consideration of Congress, but nothing further ever came of 
the matter in a federal way. 

Some of the other arguments are amusing now in the light of changed 
conditions and policies. The making of potash was as destructive" 5 of 
the forests as charcoal came to be in subsequent years, and it would 
seem a calamity now rather than a benefit to have revived that industry. 
Again, the State has ceased to be a seller of forest lands, but has been, 
and is once more to become, a buyer, and, therefore, would prefer lower 
rather than higher prices. 

No action having been taken on the petition of 1823, the Legislature 
was again memorialized in 1824 on the subject, with these alternative 
routes suggested: From Plattsburgh via the Saranac river to Saranac 
Lake, and thence by way of the St. Regis system of waters to Hopkinton, 
and so on by the Grass, Indian and Oswegatchie rivers to Ogdensburg; 
or, if it should be thought that such course would not adequately serve 
the northern part of Franklin county, the Saranac could be left at Loon 
Lake and the Salmon followed to Malone. 



656 History of Franklin County 

Bather strangely, New York city, which had fought bitterly the. 
building of the Erie, sent petitions to the Legislature favoring this 
project. 

The Senate committee on canals reported that it had had the pro- 
posed enterprise under consideration, expressed the belief that it was 
practicable, and recommended that the prayer of the petition, to the 
extent of ordering a survey, be granted. The report declared, further, 
the opinion of the committee to be that a canal as proposed would tend 
to divert to New York city from Montreal and Quebec the products of 
this region, and it estimated that the cost of a survey would be two 
thousand five hundred dollars, of which there was reason to believe that 
one thousand dollars would be provided by subscriptions along the line. 
An appropriation of one thousand five hundred dollars for a survey was 
accordingly recommended. Chapter 230, laws of 1824, authorized and 
required the canal commissioners to cause such survey to be made upon 
condition that the expense to the State should not exceed the amount 
stated. 

Survey was made in the same year by Holmes Hutchinson, who 
reported to the Legislature in 1825 that the route followed was .133 
miles from Ogdensburg to the Chazy river, near the village of Cham- 
plain, and thence four and a half miles by the river to the lake. The 
elevation of the summit was found to be 811 feet above Ogdensburg and 
960 feet above Lake Champlain. The route ran by the Oswegatchie 
river and the Grass to Canton ; thence to Potsdam, and on easterly 
through St. Lawrence county to Moira, Bangor, Malone, Burke and 
Chateaugay. It was proposed that it enter Malone village in the vicinity 
of the Barnard bridge over the railroad on the Fort Covington road, 
and cross the Salmon river by a stone aqueduct at a point a few rods 
north of the Main street bridge. The cost of construction for this mile, 
including the aqueduct, was estimated at $18,873 ; and about the same 
each for the mile spanning Trout river and for the mile crossing 
Chateaugay river at a point two miles south of the village. Other miles 
were estimated to cost anywhere from $3,750 at the lowest to $101, 55S 
at the highest, for the mile just west of the Mooers town line in Clinton 
county. The mile at Boardman Brook in Chateaugay was estimated 
at $26,758. The whole cost, including wooden locks, would be 
$1,744,673.72. If the locks should be built of stone it would be about 
$300,000 more. 

There ended the matter. It was a splendid dream for the period, but, 
unfortunately, it could be no more than that. Nevertheless material 



Transportation Development 657 

benefits doubtless resulted to the locality from the agitation. Half the 
State or more was clamoring at the time for canals as laterals to and 
feeders of the Erie and Champlain, and a good many people are under- 
stood to have believed that our work would go through. Local tradition 
is to the effect that outside interests began investing in lands here as 
a consequence, and that many settlers were attracted by the expectation 
of an increase in values and a boom in business which the canal was 
expected surely to bring. 

There should not be omission to note, however, that the county has 
not always been altogether destitute of water transportation facilities. 
Beginning more than a hundred years ago, ship timber and lumber were 
floated down the Salmon to Fort Covington, and thence in great rafts 
to Montreal and Quebec; and for many years Fort Covington was an 
export point by water for potash and pearlash from all of the settled 
portion of the county, as well as a port of entry for flour, salt, hides 
and other commodities. Years later there was steamboat traffic to and 
from there, and Captain James Sawyer is claimed to have been the 
first, in 1848, to run the Long Sault rapids with a steamer. Formerly 
the Salmon permitted ascent by boats drawing eight or nine feet of 
water, and large steamboats docked regularly at Dundee, and smaller 
craft a mile or so farther up the stream and south of the international 
border. In this period canal boats in tow, laden with the produce and 
manufactures of the region, were run directly through from Fort Cov- 
ington to New York city. In 1866 two large steamboats ran regularly 
between Fort Covington or Dundee and Montreal, with a rivalry so keen 
that the fare was only a sixpence. As late as 1881 there were four lines 
of steamers in and out from Dundee — one running to Cornwall, one 
to Lancaster and St. Anicet, one to Ogdensburg, and one to Massena. 
In 1884 an appropriation for a survey of the Salmon was voted by 
Congress upon the ground that the barges sunk by General Brown in 
1813 and 1814 had caused silt to lodge around their hulks, filling the 
channel, and a year or two later the stream was dredged to the Canadian 
border. Effort to secure like action by Canada failing, the money was 
practically thrown awa} r . The channel clogged again, and in places 
between Fort Covington and the St. Lawrence is now navigable only by 
pleasure launches which draw not to exceed three or four feet. 

Small steamers used to ascend the St. Begis also from the St. 
Lawrence as far as Hoganshurgh. 

The first railroad in the United States had only begun to operate, 
and the first in the world had been built not more than four or five 



658 History of Franklin County 

years, when, smarting from failure to secure its canal, and evidently 
of the mind that it was entitled to particular consideration by reason 
of that disappointment, Northern New York began to clamor for a rail- 
road on practically the line of the lost waterway, as if the isolation of 
the region, its difficult terrain, and its poverty both in means and popu- 
lation were no very serious obstacles. Considering the time and con- 
ditions, the movement seems to have been assertion of the nerviest enter- 
prise and most optimistic pluck conceivable. Against all discourage- 
ments and disappointments, and necessarily conscious of course of their 
inadequate means, lack of " pull " or influence, and with next to nothing 
to contribute toward a combination with other similar movements, the 
men of the time nevertheless continued to show their fighting quality 
until their cause triumphed nearly twenty years later, though not quite 
along the lines originally contemplated. These were that the enterprise 
should be distinctively a State affair at the State's cost, and be con- 
ceded as an offset to the public works created elsewhere, for which our 
people had helped to pay in proportion to their means, and without 
having been given anything in return. Of course little could be accom- 
plished or even attempted in the first stages of the struggle beyond 
emphasizing the needs of the section for better transportation facilities 
of some sort, and appealing to the Legislature to equalize us with the 
upbuilding benefits that it had showered upon other communities. In 
1830 a meeting at Ogdensburg, largely attended by prominent men 
representing the entire northern district, addressed appeals both to the 
State Legislature and to Congress to inaugurate the work, and a mass 
convention at Malone a few weeks later, in 1831, spoke similarly. And 
so matters continued until in 1836 a Lake Champlain and Ogdensburg 
Railroad was incorporated by act of the Legislature. It was capitalized 
at $800,000, and was required to begin construction work and expend 
at least $25,000 within two years under penalty of forfeiture of its char- 
ter. Commissioners representative of Essex, Clinton, Franklin and St. 
Lawrence counties and New York city were named in the act to open 
books for the subscription of stock. Benjamin Clark and Jonathan 
Stearns were to serve for Franklin county, with David L. Seymour of 
Fort Covington added in 1837. Residents of Malone subscribed for 
stock the day that the books were opened to the amount of $21,150, but 
with all of the canvassing and effort that followed the total for the entire 
county could be lifted only to $50,200, though other counties apparently 
did better, as at the end of a week the entire amount placed reached 
$400,000, which grew eventually to $600,000 — a part of which came 



Transportation Development 059 

from New York city and New England. But there were numerous other 
like companies organizing at the same time — some of them with more 
influential friends or richer connections, so that they absorbed prac- 
tically all of the uninvested capital of the country that was available for 
railroads. Failure for the time was recognized, actual organization was 
not undertaken, the subscriptions already in hand were canceled, and 
where cash had been paid in it was returned. A few months of inactiv- 
ity ensued, and then, in 1838, at another convention held at Malone, 
the project was revived on the original lines. A committee was created 
to collect and marshal statistics which should indicate the volume of 
freight that the road might expect, and upon presentation of the evi- 
dence in this regard the Legislature appropriated $4,000 for a survey, 
which mapped two routes; one to start at Port Kent and proceed by 
way of Saranac Lake, Parishville and Potsdam, and the other to begin 
at Plattsburgh and to pass through Chateaugay, Malone and Moira. A 
road by the route first outlined was estimated to cost two and three- 
quarter millions of dollars, and it opens a wide field for conjecture 
regarding the changes it would have effected in the development of the 
county if it had been followed. By the second route the cost was figured 
at a million dollars less. The statistical report and the survey together 
made a strong favorable impression, and in 1840 a bill was presented 
and pressed in the Legislature for the building of the road distinctively 
and exclusively as a public work, and with tolls to be charged, as was 
the practice on the canals. The report accompanying the bill argued 
earnestly that such a road would tend to develop the resources of the 
northern counties, would be important as a military factor, would induce 
settlement in a sparsely populated section, and would be no more than a 
just recompense to the locality for the burdens it had borne for public 
works elsewhere which conferred no direct benefits upon it. The bill 
passed the Senate, but was lost in the Assembly on the last day of the 
session by one majority. In 1841 another report urging the merits of 
the proposition was submitted by the committee on railroads, and a bill 
presented which required the State to carry it through. This also was 
lost. At length, in 1845, by supreme and desperate effort, a charter was 
wrested from the Legislature barely a half hour before final adjourn- 
ment by combining our forces with those of another locality which was 
seeking a similar privilege. Hiram Horton of Malone — to whom more 
than to any other single individual in Franklin county belongs the credit 
for keeping alive the fight and for its final triumph — was our Member 
of Assembly at the time. The capital of the company was fixed at two 



660 History of Franklin County 

million dollars, and S. C. Wead of Malone was named one of the com- 
missioners to receive and distribute stock. Again appeal was made to 
Boston financial interests, and this time not unsuccessfully. The com- 
pany was organized in 1846, with Mr. Horton one of the directors, and 
contracts for construction were let in 1847. Work was begun in March, 
1848, both at Ogdensburg and at Houses Point, and was crowded with 
all practicable energy. The first passenger train into Chateaugay, drawn 
by an engine bearing the town's name, reached that place June 1, 1850, 
and Malone's first welcome to a passenger train was given September 
19th in the same year. A week later trains were running from terminus 
to terminus. The entire cost of the road, including equipment, was 
$5,022,121.31 as against the estimate ten years before of a million and 
three-quarters. 

The day that the first train arrived Malone gave itself up to a cele- 
bration in which almost delirious joy dominated everybody. Remem- 
bering that the event was the culmination of twenty years of striving, 
anxiety and sacrifice, that it was felt to comprehend the assurance of a 
prosperity and growth that would have been impossible without it, and 
that but few of the people had ever seen a railway train, we may perhaps 
reconstruct mentally something of the excitement and gladness that 
prevailed. We may be sure that every one in the community was out 
to join in the welcome and enjoy the festivities, and it is known by 
published reports that bells pealed and cannon boomed. 

Next followed a tremendous fight for the right or privilege of cross- 
ing Lake Champlain by a bridge from Rouses Point. Simulating appre- 
hension that such a structure would impede navigation of the lake, but 
in fact actuated by the fear that if built all of the products of this sec- 
tion would seek a market in Boston instead of in New York, and also 
that it would send our merchants generally to the former city for their 
stocks of goods, the Legislature at first refused to sanction a bridge, but 
at length, when some of its opponents were cornered and forced by notice 
served by William A. Wheeler that unless the bridge measure were 
passed other enterprises would be blocked, the concession was won 
authorizing a bridge with a floating draw. The excitement throughout 
this region at the time was even greater than it had been over the main 
issue, and at a mass meeting held at Malone to voice local public opinion 
five thousand people assembled, while at a similar demonstration at 
Ogdensburg the gathering numbered twice as many. No less than thirty 
cars were crowded by people from Malone who made the trip to join in 
the meeting. A few years later the type of bridge now in use was 
authorized. 



Transportation Development 661 

How far the benefits which had been expected from the road were 

realized it would be idle to attempt to determine. Unquestionably they 
were great aud manifold, and probably no point on the line profited more 
than Malone, to which came the central offices and the shops. The road 
itself was never a paying proposition, however, and it was not long 
before stock value sank out of sight, and even the bonds became much 
depreciated. Contention for operating control has occurred a number 
of times, and the property has at intervals been managed as an inde- 
pendent line, by the Central Vermont as lessee, and now is in the 
possession of the Rutland. 

The joy and mighty hopes that the building of the Northern or 0. & 
L. C. E. R. had evoked were succeeded within twenty years by discon- 
tent because the line was a monopoly, and the conviction seized upon 
the public mind that a competing road was vital to the locality's needs 
and interests. Various projects to this end began to be brought for- 
ward and advocated. The first of these, I think, in 1870, was a pro- 
posed construction of a road from Fort Covington through Malone to 
a connection with the Delaware and Hudson system at Ausable Forks. A 
public meeting was held in Malone to awaken interest, and after glow- 
ing addresses, unfolding and emphasizing the benefits which would be 
realized if the undertaking Avere put through, committees on ways and 
means were appointed. But nothing further was ever done, or seriously 
attempted — the men of means who must have furnished the money 
not having manifested any eager disposition to contribute. A little later 
the management of the great iron industry at Lyon Mountain and 
Chateaugay Lake, which was in control also of the narrow gauge railroad 
from Plattsburgh to Lyon Mountain, submitted a proposition to extend 
the road to Malone by way of Chateaugay Lake, but at a price which 
was deemed prohibitive, and no real effort was put forth to raise the 
stipulated bonus, though a survey for an independent road to Platts- 
burgh was made. Then for nearly twenty years Malone continued to 
grumble and growl because freight rates were high, but waited supinely 
for some one or some interest to come to its relief without cost to it. In 
1883 an offer to make Malone instead of Moira the northern terminus 
of the Northern Adirondack Railroad if our people would contribute 
$100,000 to the work received but scant consideration because there was 
no expectation at that time that the road would run farther south than 
St. Regis Falls, though there was a quasi promise that eventually it 
would be carried to Fort Covington. In 1887, the narrow gauge railroad 
having been extended from Lyon Mountain through Bellmont and 



662 History of Franklin County 

Franklin to Loon Lake, Malone was aroused to an effort to build a line to 
connect with it at Wolf Pond. But the required money could not be 
raised, and after making a survey of the route the matter was dropped. 

During the period of Malone's half-hearted and fruitless endeavors 
Fort Covington and Bombay began to be interested in proposed railway 
construction, and evinced disposition to pay handsomely for what they 
wanted. A plan had been advanced in I860 for a road to be built from 
St. Lambert, Que., where connection would be had with the Grand 
Trunk, to Norwood (then Potsdam Junction), where it would join the 
New York Central lines. Public meetings were held all along the pro- 
posed route through Franklin and St. Lawrence counties, and the 
proposition was received with a good deal of popular enthusiasm. There 
was no constitutional prohibition at that time against giving public aid 
to private enterprises, and Fort Covington stood ready to bond itself for 
$75,000 and Bombay for $50,000 as bonuses, and there were a number 
of individual pledges in generous amounts additional. But for some 
reason the scheme fell through, though it was revived in 1873, when the 
towuis named voted bond issues aggregating $121,000 to help along the 
undertaking. However, there was again failure, and Fort Covington was 
doomed to wait for ten years, and Bombay for fourteen, before their 
hopes were realized. In 1882 work was actually begun by the Grand 
Trunk on a road from Montreal to Fort Covington, which was finished in 
1883. Four years later the contract Avas let for continuing the line to 
Massena, and no town had to contribute more than rights of way to the 
enterprise. 

In 1883 construction of the Northern Adirondack Eailroad was begun 
at Moira, to run to St. Regis Falls, and during the ensuing six years it 
was extended piece by piece through Waverly, Santa Clara and Altamont 
to Tupper Lake. When its builder, Mr. Hurd, failed some years later, 
the railroad was sold in 1894 under foreclosure, and was reorganized 
as the Northern New York Railroad. It subsequently became the New 
York and Ottawa Railroad, which is under New York Central control. 
The management determined in 1896 to extend the line southerly from 
Tupper Lake to North Creek in Warren county, where it would join the 
Delaware and Hudson system, and northerly from Moira to Ottawa, 
thus forming a direct line between New York city and the Dominion 
capital. But the purpose to build to North Creek was thwarted because 
State lands had to be crossed, which the courts enjoined. The case was 
carried to the court of appeals, the railroad company losing. The plan 
to go to Ottawa was executed, and the St. Lawrence was bridged to Corn- 



Transportation Development 663 

wall. The first attempt at bridging was a calamitous failure, the bridge 
having collapsed September 6, 1898. The structure stood 47 feet above 
the river, which was 40 feet deep, and when it went down it carried 
many workmen with it. Fourteen were killed or drowned. 

The Chateaugay Railroad was extended into and through Bellmont 
and Franklin in 1886 and 1887, and in 1888 to Saranac Lake, with 
conversion subsequently to standard gauge. 

Ernest G. Eeynolds, in conjunction with the Central Vermont, fin- 
ished building a railroad from Moira to Bombay in 1889, and in 1891 
organized a company to extend it to Hogansburgh and the St. Lawrence 
river. The latter undertaking never went further than a paper stage, 
however, and the former resulted in a foreclosure sale of the property 
in 1897. The rails were taken up and sold for old iron in 1900. 

In 1890 the Canada Atlantic projected a railroad to run from Valley- 
field, Que., to Malone, asking Malone to give it a bonus of $G0,000 in 
consideration of building to that place. The stipulated sum was sub- 
scribed, a part to be payable in materials or in labor, and the Dominion 
of Canada and the Province of Quebec gave subventions aggregating 
$184,000. Work was begun and pushed, and January 11, 1892. the 
first passenger train was run from Malone to Valleyiield and Montreal. 
The property was operated for a year or two by the Central Vermont, 
and was then bought by Dr. W. Seward Webb. It has since become a 
part of the New York Central lines. 

It was doubtless this construction which determined Dr. Webb in 
1891 to build a railway through the Adirondacks. It was reported at 
the time that at first he sought to buy the Northern Adirondack Rail- 
road, which, if successful, would have left Saranac Lake out of the reck- 
oning, and possibly Malone also. But Mr. third's refusal to sell, or his 
demand for an exorbitant price, compelled a recasting of plans, which 
swung the road easterly from Tupper Lake, and so benefited Harriets- 
town and Saranac Lake, Brighton, Franklin and Bellmont. Dr. Webb's 
proposition to Malone was straightforward and simple ; for $30,000 to 
be given by the people of Malone and vicinity he would bring a first-class 
railroad, fully and finely equipped, to Malone — affording direct connec- 
tions with Montreal and New York city. There is reason now to believe 
that he would have done all this without a dollar from us, but our people 
were taking no chances in the matter, and with an earnestness and an 
enthusiasm never before manifested in any similar public matter pro- 
ceeded to clinch the bargain. The road was built with a rush, and the 
first train from Malone to Saranac Lake was run July 16, 1892, and 



664 History of Franklin County 

the rails completing the line were joined a few months later. For a 
time through traffic to and from New York was by way of Norwood and 
over the E., W. & 0. E. B., but trains over the regular line were in 
operation October 24, 1892. The road has been of inestimable con- 
venience and benefit to Malone and to the county as a whole. 

These several enterprises have given railway facilities to every town 
in the county with the exceptions of Brandon, Duane and Westville. 

The progress from the ox-cart and forest trails of 1796, great as it 
was, still left much to be desired, for good home highways are scarcely 
less important than railways; and for a hundred years and more we 
made and maintained our roads by wretchedly inefficient and wasteful 
practices — commuting highway taxes by pretending to work them out ; 
applying no trained intelligence in administering even so poor a system 
as it was; disregarding thoroughness; concentrating effort on cheap 
repairs that hardly survived a season ; attempting very few permanent 
improvements ; and even in cases where money appropriations were 
voted failing often to expend them to good advantage. Years of agita- 
tion, argument and entreaty were required to persuade tax-payers to 
better courses and to the adoption of real reforms. 

It was not until 1898 that the State began to take a hand in highway 
improvement in a broad way, and it was almost ten years later before 
Franklin county could be aroused to take advantage of this new policy 
by providing for sharing in the benefits which the expenditure of a hun- 
dred million dollars must confer. Even as late as 1904, when other 
counties had had work instituted in them which was to cost millions 
of dollars, and for a proportionate part of which Franklin was paying, 
and when the matter was canvassed tentatively by the board of super- 
visors, it was manifest that it would be impossible to obtain a majority 
vote in that body for obligating the county to any expenditure or indebt- 
edness in any amount whatever for making good roads. But so much 
was achieved during the ensuing year in awakening public interest in 
the matter that the board voted in 1905, eighteen to one, to petition for 
the improvement of a few miles of highways under the plan by which the 
State undertook to bear most of the cost, and the county and the towns 
to share equitably in providing for the remainder. In 1907 the super- 
visors actually made petition for the improvement of certain roads of 
which a part was to be in every town, and afterward added to the mileage 
then contemplated until the roads so built or planned measure about 150 
miles. That is, the county was committed to action comprehending an 
aggregate expenditure of at least a million dollars, of which we must 



Transportation Development 665 

pay locally a par:, even for the mileage originally proposed, estimated 
at $135,200. The same year the State engineer and surve} r or had pre- 
pared plans upon which the petition in question was based, and those 
plans the supervisors approved. Though there were some votes in oppo- 
sition., they were determined not so much by hostility to the general 
proposition as by dissatisfaction with some of the allotments of mileage 
or selection of routes which the plans specified. 

Besides the roads thus arranged for, the State has constructed, or is 
to construct, roads wholly at its own cost from M alone to Moira; from 
Nicholville to Moira; from Chateaugay village to the Clinton county 
line; from Malone to Duane ; in Malone village; and from Chateaugay 
to Malone — something like 37^ miles in all. 

The cost of ordinary repairs and of maintenance of both of these 
classes of highways is borne wholly by the State except that each town 
has to contribute $50 per mile per year for such portions as lie within 
it, the aggregate of town contributions having amounted in 191? to 
$5,200. The sinking fund for cancellation of the county's obligations 
for the work calls for an annual levy of $3,21(5.81 . to continue for fifty 
years. Yet more, the towns have increased their former usual highway 
taxes until the total now runs more than $90,000 a year, and, besides, 
a number of towns have bonded themselves in considerable amounts 
(Altamont for $20,000, Brighton for $15,000, Franklin for $13,500, and 
other towns for from $5,000 to $7,000 each) to make improvements on 
the most approved lines of particular highways within their own 
respective boundaries. The town roads in the county aggregate 1,377 
miles, and, though most of them are much better than they used to be, 
and some really high-class, many still continue very poor. 

Having awakened at length to the importance of good roads, and 
having come to an appreciation of the greater ease and lessened cost of 
marketing products and of pleasure travel which they afford, the county 
determined in 1910 to have more of them than could be secured through 
State action or assistance, and the supervisors voted a bond issue of half 
a million dollars for the construction of about 135 miles of exclusively 
county roads, the mileage to be apportioned as equitably as possible 
among the towns, so that each should share in the benefits as well as in 
meeting the cost. Substantially all of this fund has now been 
expended — • most of it in building macadam highways, but a part in 
making really excellent graveled roads. The average cost per mile under 
this plan has been between $3,000 and $4,000, or hardly more than a 
quarter as much as the average expenditure for Slate roads; and, of 



666 History of Franklin County 

course, they can not be expected to be as durable as the latter. Some 
of them are already badly worn, but it is planned to repair or recon- 
struct wherever necessary in order to preserve the work. The county 
is paying $10,000 a year for retirement of bonds, about $21,000 for inter- 
est charges, and $40,000 for repairs and maintenance, a total of more 
than $71,000. To the repair and maintenance item the State adds 
$20,000, so that the available amount for this purpose is $60,000 
annually. 

With the development of our highways has come, all within less than 
twenty years, a greatly increased use of automobiles. The number 
owned in the county as shown by the records in the Secretary of State's 
office was 2,346 on the first of February, 1918, or one to every 19 
inhabitants, exclusive of Indians. Twenty-three agents are pushing 
sales even faster than they can get their orders filled by the makers. Of 
the total number no less than 1,984 are distinctively pleasure motors, 
23 are operated by dealers, 147 are in use as hacks or on stage lines, and 
188 are employed by draymen or by merchants in delivering goods. At 
an average of only $500 each for the pleasure cars (and some of them 
cost more than three times that), the investment is a million dollars, or 
ten times as much as Malone tried vainly to raise upon two or three 
occasions thirty and forty years ago for additional railway lines which 
were felt to be of vital importance. Yet now the people rush with 
eagerness into automobile buying, some even mortgaging their homes 
to raise the money, when ownership of a car entails constant expense for 
upkeep and is also an ever-present temptation to other expenditure. 
Still, added to the facilities which the railroads afford, these motor cars 
are in fact an important factor in our transportation system, though 
of course they make a tremendous wear upon the roads. 

It is a far cry to these from the ox service upon which the pioneers 
were wholly dependent, when a week's time was required for a round 
trip to Plattsburgh for supplies, or even from the use of horses. The 
steers and oxen, indispensable at one time, have practically disappeared, 
and one is moved to wonder if the horse also is to go. Some types, 
indeed, have almost gone already, notably the fine drivers. Less than a 
generation ago sales of well matched, finely bred spans of horses here 
were numerous every year at from $500 to $1,500, and now it would be 
difficult to find a single such pair ; and even handsome, f ast-gaited single 
animals are very few. Draft horses are more common, and if sound and 
of heavy weight are in good demand. It is an interesting question 
whether, with the exception of the type that now seems indispensable for 



Transportation Development 667 

farm work and for lumbering, the horse is doomed to such disappearance 
as we have seen in the case of the ox and the steers. 

A single word of suggestion may not be impertinent. When the 
great war ends France and England, and not improbably Germany as 
well, will naturally look to this country to stock them with horses. The 
supply in the West is not large, and might it not be good policy for our 
farmers to breed more, and be in position to profit through such demand ? 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE FENIAN RAIDS 

Malone was a point of rendezvous both in 1866 and 1870 for the 
forces which were to overrun and possess Canada as a means of freeing 
Ireland from British oppression. 

The word " Fenian " is the Irish " Feinne " anglicized, and " feinne " 
was the legendary band of warriors in Ireland led by Find MacCumail. 
Plans for the organization of the Fenian Society were formulated in 
Paris as early as 1848, and an organization known as the Irish Revolu- 
tionary Brotherhood was actually effected in 1853 through the efforts 
of James Stephens. Its aim was to be the conversion of the people of 
Ireland into a soldiery that should be capable of coping with the British 
army, and so to establish an independent republic based upon universal 
suffrage and peasant proprietorship of the land; the lands of hostile 
landlords to be confiscated, but those of others to be paid for at a fair 
valuation. As stated in the Britannica, John O'Mahoney was the organ- 
izer in the United States in 1858, and the purpose of the American 
movement was to supply money and arms to the Irish branch. > It was 
five or six years, however, before it attracted much attention or mani- 
fested particular activity. Members of the society are said to have 
bound themselves by an oath of " allegiance to the Irish republic, now 
virtually established," and to have sworn to take up arms when called 
upon, and to yield implicit obedience to the commands of their superior 
officers. There were ramifications of the society in every part of the 
world. 

In accordance with the original plan to prosecute operations in Ireland 
itself, considerable numbers of Irish veterans of the American civil war 
flocked to Ireland at once upon the close of our conflict, with the inten- 
tion of inciting and leading an uprising there. But informers kept the 
British government apprised of the society's plans and acts, so that 
many of the plotters were arrested. Some were sentenced to death, 
though penal servitude was substituted. The hazards and difficulties 
of procedure on Irish soil having been thus demonstrated, the American 
organization split, and W. E. Roberts became the leader of the faction 
here which contended that revolt in Ireland could not be successful, and 
which determined to direct activities from the United States, particu- 

[f>6S] 



The Feniax Raids 669 

laxly because, whether with or without reason, it was believed that, still 
smarting from England's sympathies and aid to the South, our authori- 
ties and people would give the undertaking, if nut support, at least a 
passive attitude when actual invasion of Canada should be attempted. 
That assumption was apparently justified in part at least by the i 
for there was no official interference with the movement until operations 
were actually in progress. Drilling, the purchase of arms and ammu- 
nition, and the raising of money were permitted without sign of objec- 
tion or warning from Washington to desist, and individuals who had 
grown up in a traditional spirit of enmity to England, surviving from 
the war of the revolution and that of 1812, and intensified by the 
boundary dispute and England's course in having permitted confeder- 
ate privateers to be fitted out there, encouraged the Fenian leaders in 
almost every possible manner — even by the contribution of money to 
their cause. This was especially true of politicians who sought to acquire 
or hold the Irish vote through such attitude. John A. Macdonald's 
" Troublous Times in Canada " gives the best account of what happened 
thereafter that I have anywhere seen, and I condense from it. 

Fenian circles or lodges were organized in every possible corner of the 
United States, with the hope of arousing Irish enthusiasm and inducing 
contributions. Military companies and regiments, under the direction 
of Irishmen who had gained distinction in our civil war, were formed 
wherever practicable, and drilling and parading occurred almost openly. 
Even servant girls and day laborers gave generously from their scanty 
earnings, and the system of solicitation of funds was thoroughly 
organized and assiduously prosecuted. Besides, money was raised in 
this country in 1866 by the issue and sale of bonds in the name of the 
Irish Eepublic, which were to be payable when Ireland was a nation 
again. With the funds so realized arms and ammunition were pur- 
chased, and preparations made for an invasion of Canada. 

In March, 1866, the Fenian Council made announcement that such 
expeditions would assemble at Detroit, Eochester, Ogdensburg, Pitts- 
burgh, and Portland, Maine — the Ogdensburg and Plattsburgh divi- 
sions to demonstrate against Montreal, and eventually against Quebec. 
Bases were to be established in Canada where reinforcements would 
mass and organization be effected (one of them at Prescott), so as to 
prevent interference by the United States authorities. The Council 
claimed that by April first it would have fifteen million dollars at its 
disposal, and that the Fenian army would then aumber thirty thousand 
men, who would be increased within a fortnight to eighty thousand. A 



670 History of Franklin County 

navy would be created on each of the lakes, Huron, Erie and Ontario, 
and upon the conquest of Canada, which a single campaign was to 
accomplish, the war would be extended in 1867 to the ocean and Ireland. 

For the purposes of this sketch it is not essential to recite the particu- 
lars of the operations in the vicinity of Fort Erie (near Buffalo), nor 
those directed from Vermont against Pigeon Hill, and the narrative 
will be restricted to events and incidents in Northern New York, with 
proper references to Canada's course in the matter. 

Anticipating an invasion, the Dominion authorities placed troops at 
frontier points as early as November, 1865, and kept them on duty 
throughout the winter. The editor of the Gleaner, published at 
Huntingdon, is authority for the statement that at that place, as well 
as at many other frontier points, a mounted patrol was assigned to the 
duty of watching at night the roads leading from the States. In March, 
1866, a call was made for ten thousand Canadian volunteers, and four- 
teen thousand responded. Fenian operations, however, suffered delay, 
and, believing that danger of attack had passed for the time, the 
volunteers were allowed to return to their homes in April, and vigi- 
lance was relaxed for a period of about six weeks, during which all 
reports of a probable Fenian advance were received with incredulity. 
But on the morning of the second of June a messenger arrived at 
Huntingdon from Chateaugay, bearing the news that the evening trains 
of Friday had passed loaded with Fenians for Malone. Simultaneously 
officers had come from Montreal post haste with orders to get the volun- 
teers under arms at once. These responded with alacrity, but no rifles 
were to be had at the moment, so that had the Fenians advanced promptly 
they would have encountered practically no resistance. At Huntingdon, 
ordinary work was all suspended, and intense excitement ruled. Guards 
were placed at the bridges, the roads were continually patrolled, and a 
fortification was built to command the Trout Biver highway, with can- 
non placed to command the approach. Companies of soldiers came from 
Ormstown and other neighboring villages, and even from Montreal. 
The weather changed suddenly to heavy rains, and the roads became 
quagmires. This condition and the arrival of troops would in themselves 
have thwarted any successful invasion after the second or third of June. 
But the fact existed that an indescribable anxiety and • suspense pre- 
vailed all along the border. Several Fenians are said to have penetrated 
in disguise as far as Huntingdon, where some of them were apprehended 
and taken as prisoners to Montreal. On the other hand, many Cana- 
dian farmers moved their families into camps in the woods, and even 
brought them over the frontier to find refuge with American friends. 



The Fenian Raids 671 

The initial acts at Maloue were the announcement in March that 
Edward J. Mannix of Malone, who had been a captain in the civil war, 
had been commissioned a Fenian colonel, and that he had enlisted forty 
or fifty men. A subscription was started in Malone to buy a flag for 
the command. Two thousand muskets packed in boxes, labeled 
" machinery " and addressed to Dennis F. Mannix, were seized by the 
federal authorities at Rouses Point, but are believed to have been restored 
to him subsequently, as, after the trouble was over, " Colonel " Mannix 
advertised twelve hundred and eighty Springfield rifles for sale, which 
were understood at the time to be the same that had been seized at 
Rouses Point. 

During the first and second days of June Fenians to the number of 
two thousand to twenty-five hundred came pouring into Malone by train. 
They were under the command of General M. J. Heffernan, a physical 
giant, with Generals Murphy and O'Reilly, both civil war veterans, asso- 
ciated with him. (Mr. O'Reilly had been formerly a resident of Fort 
Covington, where he had clerked in the store of William Hogle.) Both 
Murphy and O'Reilly were assiduous in effort to weld the men into a 
fighting force. They camped as a body on the fair grounds, with many 
scattered individuals sleeping in barns as they could find the chance ; and, 
having no food or sufficient supplies, were dependent in the main upon 
the generosity of residents for maintenance. Little or no restraint was 
imposed upon the individual units, who, at their pleasure, frequented 
the business section of the village both by day and by night. Of course 
there was a good deal of nervous apprehension lest they engage in pilfer- 
ing or even set fire to property through carelessness. I recall that as a 
boy I and another slept for a number of nights in the building on the 
corner of Main and Catherine streets, as a precaution against the latter 
possible danger. But so large a body of men not subject to rigid 
discipline never carried themselves under anything like similar condi- 
tions more circumspectly nor with greater decorum save for the following 
single exception: William C. Sylvester, N. J. McGillivray and a Dr. 
Macintosh of Cornwall or Lancaster visited Malone as a matter of 
curiosity. Their dress and general appearance actually shouted their 
nationality, and the Fenians not unnaturally spotted them as spies. A 
wilder scene than that which instantly followed in front of the old 
Miller House, which stood about on the site of the present Hotel 
Flanagan, I never saw in Malone. Hundreds of crazed Fenians surged 
here and there, all striving violently to reach and strike these Canadians. 
The Fenian officers had little control over the mob, but nevertheless 



672 History of Franklin County 

mingled vigorously in it, and sought strenuously to quiet it and to rescue 
the men who were the objects of its wrath and fury. Dr. Macintosh 
escaped practically unhurt, and I am told hid for hours under a lounge 
in the law office of the late William P. Cantwell. Mr. Sylvester's 
injuries were not severe. Mr. McGillivray was at length hustled out of 
the crowd, led up the stairway on the outside of the hotel on the east, 
and taken into the passenger station, then in course of construction. He 
was secreted in the attic of the south tower, and remained there until 
midnight, when he was guided to the residence of Colonel Joel J. Seaver 
on Pearl street, where his wounds were dressed, and he and Mr. Syl- 
vester put to bed. A worse battered man than Mr. McGillivray 1 never 
saw. Visualization of him remains with me after the lapse of half 
a century. Not only was his face horribly discolored, but it appeared to 
be literally raw from chin to forehead. His team was sent in the morn- 
ing down the Constable road a mile or two, and he and Mr. Sylvester were 
taken in a two-seated carriage by Colonel Seaver to the point where 
their own rig had been dispatched. The Canadians occupied the rear 
seat, and Colonel and Mrs. Seaver the seat in front. With curtains up, 
the Canadians were fairly well screened against street scrutiny, and were 
not recognized. 

There was no advance from Maione upon Canada in 1866. The 
Fenians came without arms or equipment, which they expected to find 
awaiting them. But all along the border the United States authorities 
had intercepted and seized muskets, ammunition, etc., in immense quan- 
tities, and even the fiery but deluded men were not so foolhardy as to 
undertake war with naked and empty hands. General Meade had 
ordered the United States marshal at Watertown to seize and hold two 
carloads of arms that were on their way to Maione. The first part of 
the order was executed, but the Fenians overcame the marshal's force, 
and, manning the train themselves, continued it on its way. Jt was 
stopped at DeKalb, however, and the arms again taken into custody, and 
this time held. Meanwhile the officers at Maione fretted and stormed, 
and, upon the arrival of General Meade with a thousand United States 
regulars on Sunday morning, June 3d, became utterly discouraged. On 
June 9th General Meade issued an order commanding the Fenian forces 
to desist from their enterprise and disband. The order in question char- 
acterized the movement as "now hopeless," and declared that if not 
complied with promptly a sufficient body of regulars would be employed 
to enforce obedience. A number of the leaders were required to give 
bonds for observance of our neutrality laws, and many desertions by the 



The Fenian Raids G73 

rank and file occurred. Transportation to their homes was furnished by 
General Meade to all who applied for it, and at once Malone became as 
quiet and as empty of strangers as it had been a month before. 

Over twenty prisoners were made at one or another point in Canada, 
and were sentenced to be hung. The sentences were, however, com- 
muted to life imprisonment, though a few executions did occur in 
England or Ireland. 

During the ensuing four years rumors of another contemplated 
invasion circulated at frequent intervals, but it was not until the early 
spring of 1870 that the second movement was definitely determined upon 
and arranged. This time the army was not to depend upon the arrival 
of equipment simultaneously with itself, and guns, ammunition, axes, 
picks, intrenching tools and stores had been forwarded weeks or even 
months in advance, though the commissariat was again inadequate, and 
consisted only of a few barrels of pork and hard-tack. The supplies had 
been received in Malone and at other places in the county by local lead- 
ers, who caused them to be secreted in barns or outbuildings of friendly 
farmers in the vicinity until they should be wanted. Ardent young 
Irish lads were enlisted to haul the stuff from railway points to the 
selected hiding places, and many a man now living here who has reached 
the age of sixty-eight or seventy years could tell to-day where and how 
he did the work. Chateaugay, Fort Covington and Hogansburgh, next 
to Malone, were the principal assembling points for arms, which, when 
the time arrived, were hauled to Trout Eiver. 

Malone was again chosen as one of the principal places from which 
the invasion should proceed — the plan having been to rush a force into 
Canada, where it was to intrench, and await reinforcements. Thus the 
danger of interference by United States authorities was to be escaped. 
Accordingly as the squads which were to be marshaled into an army 
reached Malone they made no camp here, as they did in 1866, but at once 
upon arrival hurried on to Trout River, eleven miles distant on the 
border; and where their equipment had been hauled by night, and was 
awaiting them. At Trout Eiver they made temporary camp on the 
farm of George Lahey, a half mile south from the hamlet, but on May 
25th advanced, three hundred strong, each man furnished with fifty 
rounds of ammunition, into Canada. Of course spies and secret agents 
had informed the Dominion authorities of what was afoot, and five 
thousand Canadian militiamen had been called out for defense of the 
country. None reached Huntingdon, however, until May 26th, so that 
the place was undefended except by about a hundred and fifty men, 

22 



674 History of Franklin County 

almost untrained and not well armed. A vigorous advance on May 25th, 
it was felt at Huntingdon, must certainly have succeeded in capturing 
the village, but a day later more than a thousand regulars had arrived 
from Montreal, supported by artillery, of which the Fenians had none. 

The invading force of the 25th of May is reported to have penetrated 
the enemy country to a distance of about three miles. Choosing a strong 
natural position, on the Donnelly farm, a mile north of Holbrookes, a 
drainage ditch was utilized for a rifle pit, and the entire day was spent 
in constructing breastworks of rails and logs. While in Canada some 
of the Fenians stopped at Holbrookes and evinced a disposition to loot 
the store, but finally compromised with the proprietor upon his giving 
them forty pounds of tobacco. They levied also upon the farmers of 
the vicinity for food, one farmer having been compelled to serve break- 
fast for a party of eighteen, and fowls having been confiscated wherever 
found. 

On May 26th, probably by reason of reinforcements having failed to 
join them and also because of discouragement due to the repulse of a 
similar movement near St. Albans, the invaders retired to the south of 
the international boundary, and again went into camp on the Lahey farm. 
Further arrivals to the number of about five hundred came on May 2;th, 
whereupon Canada was once more entered, and the grounds prepared the 
day before reoccupied and strengthened. A contemporaneous account 
represents that the ditch which was to serve as a trench or rifle pit was 
in front of a hop field defended by a breastwork of rails and logs, "with 
a stout barricade across the highway, and that the Fenian line rested 
on the river on one side and on a dense wood on the other - — a position 
so skillfully chosen that five hundred resolute men properly trained and 
adequately officered ought to have been able to hold it against thousands. 
General Starr and General Gleason were in command. The Canadians, 
numbering upward of a thousand, attacked with dash and bravery, and 
after the shortest of engagements the Fenians abandoned their works 
and fled in great disorder. They fired only a single full volley when the 
Canadian advance began, though scattering shots continued for a few 
minutes, all of which were aimed so high that the bullets passed over the 
heads of the attacking force, and even cut the tops of the hop poles in the 
field through which the Canadians were charging. The Canadian firing 
was a little better sustained, but must have been almost as poorly aimed, 
as the casualties were insignificant. The pursuit continued energetically 
to the border, where the junior colonel (McEachern) in command of the 
Canadians was quite insistent upon following the fleeing enemy south 



The Fenian Raids 675 

of the line, but the senior commanded the bugles to sound " cease firing/' 
and peremptorily forbade any of his men to set foot on United States 
territory. Thus the battalion came to a halt, with a parting salutation 
of three rousing British cheers. 

The routed and panic-stricken Fenians poured along the main street 
of Trout Eiver and through yards and fields to their former camp, 
whence they continued their flight even to Malone — many of them 
throwing away their arms and accoutrements and even clothing; many 
others stopping here and there at farm houses to barter their guns for 
food; and a few still in possession of their arms upon reaching Malone. 

On May 28th, while the returned Fenians were in camp on the fair 
grounds, two of their officers addressed them in advocacy of another 
advance, but, discouraged and hungry, the men were not eager for adop- 
tion of the suggestion, and, besides, United States regulars to the num- 
ber of a thousand arrived the next morning, and would have suppressed 
any such undertaking. Meantime the Canadians had gone into camp in 
the vicinity of the place of engagement, but a part of them were with- 
drawn that very day, and on the 31st the last of them were released from 
service. 

There were no Canadian casualties in the Trout Eiver battle. Three 
or four Fenians were wounded, and one was made prisoner. 

Current comment in Malone by men of military experience was at the 
time that the rank and file of the Fenians were excellent material for 
soldiers, and that except for the incompetency of the officers and a total 
lack of discipline a far better showing might have been made. 

The whole number of Fenians in Malone in 1870 was probably not 
more than a thousand, and their conduct in town was orderly. The 
United States regulars here were accompanied by General Meade, General 
McDowell, General Hunt, General Ingalls and. other officers of high 
rank. 

Several of the Fenian officers, including Captain Mannix of Malone, 
were arrested for violation of the neutrality law, were afterward indicted, 
tried and convicted at Canandaigua, and were sentenced to imprison- 
ment. A few months later all were pardoned by the President. The 
United States did not upon this occasion furnish transportation to the 
Fenians to their homes — many having paid their own fare at a reduced 
rate, and others having been transported at the expense of the State of 
New York. 

The Britannica says that in 1866 Great Britain complained that no 
real effort was made, or even disposition manifested, on the part of the 



676 History of Franklin County 

United States government to enforce the neutrality law; and the same 
work is authority for the statement that the Fenian inspector-general in 
1870 was in reality a secret agent of the British government. This 
officer claimed to have distributed fifteen thousand stand of arms and 
almost three million rounds of ammunition among trusted men of the 
organization between Ogdensburg and St. Albans. 

The references that have been made to informers and secret agents 
mingling among the Fenians undoubtedly rest upon a solid basis of 
fact. An eminent Canadian has told the writer recently that he has 
absolute personal knowledge that a member of the Canadian parliament 
served his government in such capacity, journeying into this country, 
and frequenting saloons and other places where there was thought to be 
opportunity to gather information. These facts revive memory con- 
cerning the murder of George Seabury of Chateaugay in Malone in 1867. 
Mr. Seabury was a graduate of Franklin Academy, and was at the time 
home from Amherst College. He was found at daylight dead in the 
street in front of the present salesrooms of Eldredge & Mason, the base- 
ment of the structure then standing on the premises having been then 
occupied by Edward Dobbins as a saloon. Letters and a purse on his 
person were undisturbed, but pennies and other articles in his trousers 
pockets were almost falling out, as though he had been carried up-stairs 
feet first. There were contusions on his face and forehead, and a bullet 
had pierced his heart. No evidence could be discovered to justify arrests, 
though one dissolute character did claim when intoxicated to have wit- 
nessed the shooting, but as soon as sober repudiated his story. It was the 
general impression at the time that Mr. Seabury had been shot in the 
saloon, and his body carried under cover of darkness to the street — 
such impression having been based upon the assumption that he had 
been found by the Fenians to be a spy in the pay of the British govern- 
ment. Whether that view was or was not correct no one here knew or 
yet knows with certainty. 

The Fenian organization practically disappeared within twenty-five 
years of its founding, and no agitation for an Irish invasion and con- 
quest of Canada has occurred in the past forty years or more. 



CHAPTER XXX 
ELEAZER WILLIAMS 

Was There "a Bourbon Among Us?" 

The eldest son of the king of France came first to bear the title of 
Prince of Dauphine or the Dauphin in 1349 by reason of the fact that 
the last independent lord of Dauphine bequeathed the principality in 
that year to the grandson of the then king of France upon condition 
that the crown prince should always bear the title and govern the prov- 
ince. The condition as to governing was not long observed, that func- 
tion having been taken over by the sovereign. The title, however, 
continued until 1832, when it was abolished. 

The second son of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, an elder 
brother having died in infancy, was seized and confined in the prison 
of the Temple August 10, 1792, and given into the keeping of a brutal 
cobbler named Simon, between whom and the Committee of Safety this 
conversation is said to have occurred : " What is to be done to this young 
wolf? Carry him away?" " No." "Kill him?" "No." "Poison 
him?" "No." " What then?" "Get rid of him!" This last answer 
was interpreted by Simon to be a direction to so treat the prince that 
his constitution would be broken and his mind destroyed, with the con- 
sequence that death must ensue, and yet seem to be due to natural 
causes, or at least making it possible so to represent. Such would prob- 
ably have been the certain outcome had not Simon obtained a more 
remunerative assignment before his work had been finished. Possibly it 
was in fact the issue. It is undisputed that the Dauphin continued to 
remain a prisoner in the Temple at least until June 1, 1795, deprived 
of decent surroundings, existing in uncleanliness, filth and foul air, and 
suffering beatings and the harshest possible treatment generally. 
Whether he died in the Temple June 8, 1795, or a diseased and dying 
boy of about his age, taken from a hospital, was substituted for him, 
while he was secretly removed to another room in the Temple and kept 
concealed until opportunity could be found to spirit him out of the 
building and out of France, is and probably Avill continue always to be a 
matter of dispute. The court and government authorities maintain the 
former contention, but from the first so much of a mystery was made 
of various phases of the affair, and so many points left unexplained and 

[677] 



678 History of Franklin County 

in contradiction, that opinion has been in doubt, and perhaps inclined 
as a whole to the latter view. The report of the autopsy is itself unsatis- 
factory, since it affords no proof of a conclusive character that the body 
examined was identified by competent and trustworthy witnesses as 
that of the prince. Thus his own sister, though confined in the Temple 
at the time, was not called to view the corpse. Others who had been 
connected in various relations with the prince from time to time died 
suddenly, and in circumstances which led to the charge that they had 
been put out of the way by official direction because they might make 
inconvenient and disturbing disclosures. Four distinct places have been 
named as his sepulture, and the exact spot has certainly never been 
marked. Yet further, it is charged that a government order was issued 
at the time, and sent to all parts of the kingdom, to arrest any travelers 
bearing with them a child of apparently about eight years of age, as there, 
had been an escape of royalists from the Temple; and it is of record 
that the convention in 1794 passed a decree that "the committee of 
government should devise some means of sending the son of Loiiis out 
of the territories of the republic." It is also said that when, in the reign 
of Louis XVIII., and by his direction, masses were said for the repose 
of the souls of those members of the Bourbon family who perished during 
the revolution, the name of the Dauphin was omitted while the names 
of all the others were included — from which it is argued that Louis 
XVIII. must have known that the Dauphin was yet alive. 

It appears to be fairly certain that there was a death of a boy in the 
Temple on June 8, 1795, who was the Dauphin or one who was made 
to personate him, and who was sought by the authorities to be made to 
appear to have been he. Out of these conflicting representations has 
grown a mass of contention, speculation and claims filling many vol- 
umes, developing litigation, and resulting in more than forty different 
persons having asserted and attempted to demonstrate their identity 
with the Dauphin. The one of these who is generally regarded as having 
established the strongest case was one Xaundorf, but the particular claim- 
ant most interesting to Americans, and with whom alone this paper is con- 
cerned, was the man known as Eleazer Williams, who died at St. Regis 
or Hogansburgh August 28, 1858, after having passed his whole life, at 
least from early youth, with the Indians as an Indian. 

But before proceeding to unfold the amazing story of outrageous 
deprivation of his rights or of an imposture not less astonishing, let the 
facts that are indisputably known concerning Eleazer Williams be stated. 
Nothing actually authentic as to his life prior to about 1800, unless his 



Eleazer Williams 679 

own statements be accepted as such, is ascertainable. If an Indian, there 
is not even a record of his birth, and it is certain only that he passed 
in youth as the son of Thomas Williams of Caughnawaga, and was one 
of a family f twelve children. Thomas Williams was the grandson of 
Eunice Williams, and the son of an English surgeon named Williams. 
Eunice Williams was the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman of Deer- 
field, Mass., who was captured by the Indians in 1704, taken to Caugh- 
nawaga, grew to womanhood there, and married an Indian. Another 
maternal ancestor of Thomas is reputed to have had French blood in 
her veins. Eleven of Thomas Williams's children were unmistakably 
Indian in appearance, while Eleazer is claimed by many to have resem- 
bled strikingly the Caucasian type, of which fact much has been made 
in the attempt to prove him the son of a king of France, and not the 
natural child of Williams, but only an adoption. 

About the year 1800 Eleazer Williams was sent to a school at Long 
Meadow, Mass., where, and at West Hampion in the same State, and at 
other places in New England, he remained in the pursuit of his studies 
until 1812, when he was engaged by the United States to mingle with 
the St. Eegis Indians, and seek to hold them loyal to this country in its 
war with Great Britain. Later he was appointed superintendent general 
of the northern Indian department, and was at the head of a corps of 
scouts and rangers. He participated in several engagements, and was 
severely wounded at the battle of Plattsburg in 1814. In 1816 he was 
made a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, and located at Oneida, this 
State, as a missionary to the Indians. He remained at Oneida until 
1822, when the Oneida tribe was persuaded to sell its lands in New 
York, and remove to a reservation in the vicinity of Green Bay, Wis., 
where he accompanied them and continued his ministry. Mr. Williams 
had at first opposed the Oneida sale, but finally acquiesced in it. After- 
ward it was insinuated, though apparently without adducing any proof, 
that at the instance of land grabbers, and for a price, he had influenced 
the Indians to make the sale. In 1826 he was admitted to deacon's 
orders in the Episcopal Church; Bev. Amos C. Treadway, who was at 
one time rector of the Episcopal church in Malone, was one of the officiat- 
ing clergymen at this ordination*. Mr. Williams continued his rela- 
tions as a missionary with the Oneidas at Green Bay until 1850, though 
for a large part of the time his services were hardly more than nominal, 
and frequently he was absent for considerable periods. His missionary 
stipend was withheld because of inattention and neglect, and his minis- 
terial irregularities caused him to be called to account both by the bishop 



680 History of Franklin County 

of Wisconsin and the bishop of New York. For a quarter of a century 
Mr. Williams spent most of his time at Washington, haunting the com- 
mittee rooms of Congress and departmental offices, where he was engaged 
in prosecuting claims for the Indians and for himself against the govern- 
ment. While he did obtain the allowance of some of these, his success 
was not large, and his expenses had to come out of the awards, so that 
the Indians, realizing little or nothing, came to doubt his fidelity. He 
had lands and other property of his own, but Washington life not only 
made him poorer in material respects, but is said also to have affected 
his ministerial devotion. 

Having lost his standing with the Indians at Green Bay, he returned 
East in 1850, locating at St. Eegis or Hogansburgh, and opening a 
school there for Indian children. He had married a French woman at 
Green Bay, a relative of Marshal Jourdau, one of Napoleon's generals, 
and had one son. These remained in the West, and it does not appear 
that Mr. Williams ever had further intimate association with them. He 
had a claim before the Legislature of Vermont, as well as those before 
the Congress of the United States, and these he continued to agitate and 
prosecute. He obtained again a missionary appointment, secured many 
subscriptions in aid of his work at St. Begis and Hogansburgh, and is 
said by some of his biographers to have actually built a church at the 
latter place with money obtained from England. This is manifestly 
incorrect, however, because Hogansburgh has never had but two Epis- 
copalian church edifices. The first of these, a barn-like structure, and 
now used as a barn, was built through the efforts of William Hogan 
about 1834, or something like fifteen years prior to Mr. Williams's final 
abandonment of work in Wisconsin and his return permanently to New 
York. This building was never finished, and was but rarely used for 
purposes of worship. The journal of the diocese of New York for 1835 
carries the report that Rev. Mr. Pardee from Malone officiated in a 
school house at Hogansburgh in 1834, and that Mr. Hogan had at that 
time erected at his own expense a church edifice there, which it was 
expected would be finished the next year; but the same record shows 
that in 1835 little work had been done on the building. In 1836 Mr. 
Pardee, after having again visited Hogansburgh, reported that Eleazer 
Williams had been teaching Indian children during the year at St. 
Begis, and that he had usually held services on Sunday. The other 
edifice is the present church, which was not erected until some fifteen 
years after Mr. Williams's death. 

Towards the end of Mr. Williams's life he was reduced to actual des- 






Eleazer Williams 6S1 

titution, but assistance was later extended to him, and he was made 
more comfortable. 

In February, 1853, there was published in Putnam's Magazine a care- 
fully prepared article by Rev. John H. Hanson, an Episcopal clergyman 
who had formerly been located at Waddington, and was then established 
in New York city, which startled the entire country. It purported to be 
an absolute and incontrovertible demonstration that Eleazer Williams was 
m fact a Bourbon, and none other than the lost Dauphin. Mr. Hanson 
was undoubtedly sincere in the conviction that such was the truth, and 
his labors m the case, continued zealously until his death in 1855 'were 
everywhere recognized as having had no selfish or ulterior motive and to 
have been undertaken solely to establish what he believed to be' a just 
claim and to right a grave wrong. Granted that Mr. Williams told Mr 
Hanson only the truth as he himself knew it, and all of the truth it is 
exceedingly difficult to escape acceptance of Mr. Hanson's conclusions 
and demonstrations. Bui did Mr. Williams deal frankly and honestly 
at all points with Mr. Hanson? We can at least examine the evidence, 
leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions. 

It is not practicable within the limits of this sketch to follow Mr 
Hanson's magazine articles and the book on the subject which he subse- 
quently published under the title of « The Lost Prince," in all of their 
details, or even to set forth fully his arguments, but the story may be 
summarized briefly: 

In 1851 Mr. Hanson, having previously seen a short paragraph in the 
newspapers to the effect that Mr. Williams was Louis XVIL, met Mr 
Williams by chance on a railway train and from a point in the vicinity 
of Malone journeyed with him as far as Burlington, Vt. From the 
moment of meeting they discussed almost uninterruptedly the strange 
story, Mr. Williams declaring that though the subject was painful to him 
he would nevertheless give Mr. Hanson such information as he possessed' 
Mr. Williams stated that, of his own recollection, he knew nothing what- 
ever of his life in earliest years, his mind having been a blank & to him 
until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age, when he fell or dived 
from a high rock at Lake George, cutting a deep gash in his head and 
rendering him unconscious. When consciousness was recovered, he said 
that intelligence was restored, and that thereafter, though still unable 
to recall anything of his early youth definitely, he did have dim recol- 
lections and vague impressions suggestive of very different conditions and 
surroundings from those that then environed him. Among these, he said 
were recollections of lying on a carpet with his head leaning against the 



682 History of Franklin County 

silk dress of a lady, of being in a room where there were persons dressed 
magnificently, and of seeing troops exercising in a garden. Again, one 
witness for him in Mr. Hanson's story told that upon chancing upon a 
portrait of Simon the cobbler Mr. Williams exclaimed : " Good God ! 
I know that face. It has haunted me through life." 

Mr. Williams told Mr. Hanson in this first interview, en route to 
Burlington, that the first time that he had ever had reason to suppose 
himself to be of other than of Indian origin, at least in part, was in 
1841, when Prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, " Citizen King" 
of France, sought him out in the West, after having made inquiries in 
New York concerning him, and, under pledge of secrecy, told him that 
he was the Dauphin, and endeavored to induce him to renounce his 
claims or rights as such. According to Mr. Williams, the revelation 
utterly astounded him, and paralyzed his powers of reflection. He thus 
gave the matter little consideration except in its amazing aspect, and 
neglected for years to attempt in any way to probe the representation. 
It was not until 1848 that he even questioned his reputed Indian mother 
as to whether he was in fact her son, when, as he claimed, the priests 
had tampered with her, and her lips were sealed. He claimed also to 
have learned afterward at St. Eegis that the priests had argued with 
the woman, a devout Catholic, that if he, a Protestant, should come to 
the throne of France he might do incalculable injury to the Qhurch and 
be " the ruin of many souls." He did discover, however, that the 
church register at Caughnawaga, while showing the birth and baptism of 
each of his eleven reputed brothers and sisters, following closely upon 
each other " at regular intervals of two years between each," did not 
contain any record of his own birth or baptism — a most remarkable 
omission in a Catholic parish if he had in truth been born and baptised 
there. 

Mr. Williams further told Mr. Hanson that a Frenchman named 
P>elanger had died in New Orleans in 1848, and confessed on his death- 
bed that he had brought the Dauphin to this country, and placed him 
among the Indians in the northern part of New York. This story ran 
that Belanger had taken a solemn oath of secrecy, but that the altered 
circumstances of the times, and the near approach of death, induced him 
to break silence. 

The next link in the chain of identity of Williams with the Dauphin, 
as furnished by himself to Mr. Hanson, was derived from a Frenchman, 
and was to the effect that while Simon was the Dauphin's keeper he 
became enraged with him, and, snatching a towel, drew the nail on 



Eleazer Williams 683 

which it hung with it, and struck the child twice in the face, inflicting 
two wounds, one over the left eye and the other on the right side of the 
nose, which left scars. Mr. Williams certainly carried scars which as to 
location and appearance corresponded to those that the Dauphin was 
claimed to have had. 

Further, the autopsy upon the child who did die in the Temple, and 
was represented to have been the Dauphin, showed that he had died of 
scrofula, and that the disease was especially marked at the knees. Mr. 
Williams averred to Mr. Hanson that his own knees were "eaten up 
with scrofula." He called attention also to his alleged resemblance to 
Louis XVIII. and to the Bourbon family in general as further confirm- 
ing the idea of his royal descent. 

On the boat, just before reaching Burlington, Mr. Williams exhibited 
to Mr. Hanson a dress of magnificent but somewhat faded brocade silk 
which had been given to him by a lady who brought it from France, and 
who, believing Mr. Williams to be the Dauphin, considered him the 
rightful owner because the robe had been Marie Antoinette's. It had 
been taken apart, and consisted of a skirt, back piece, stomacher, and 
train ten or twelve feet in length. 

Mr. Hanson's own description of Mr. Williams's appearance is that he 
had no trace, however slight, of the Indian about him, except that his 
manner of talking reminded one of an Indian, and he had the habit of 
shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating like one. But he had " the 
port and presence of an European gentleman of high rank : a nameless 
something that I never saw but in persons accustomed to command; a 
long Austrian lip, the expression of which is of exceeding sweetness when 
in repose; full fleshy cheeks, but not high cheek bones; dark, bright, 
merry eyes of hazel hue; graceful, well formed neck; strong, muscular 
limbs, indicating health and great activity ; small hands and feet ; and 
dark hair, sprinkled with gray, as fine in texture as silk." A daguerreo- 
type taken in 1852 shows Mr. Williams smooth-shaven, but another 
description of him, quoted by Mr. Hanson, refers to his beard as heavy, 
and, describing his so-called Hapsburg or protruding lips, says that they 
are never found in the American aborigines. 

After this interview with Mr. Williams Mr. Hanson continue I tn ;.•' ■ 
an active interest in the matter, repeating Mr. Williams's representation 
to many people, and receiving additional information from other sources. 
Among these latter was Dr. J. W. Francis, of New York, sole surviving 
member of a dinner party in New York city in 1818, at which Monsieur 
Genet, then the French minister to the United States, had also been a 
guest. Dr. Francis said that the conversation had turned upon the sub- 



684 History of Franklin County 

ject of the Dauphin, when Monsieur Genet remarked : " The Dauphin 
of France is not dead, but was brought to America " — adding that he 
believed him to be then in Western New York. ( In fact, Mr. Williams was 
at that time at Oneida.) Monsieur Genet further said that two French 
noblemen had been in this country in 1817, conferring with Le Ray de 
Chaumont, and that there was reason to suppose that their errand had 
some reference to the Dauphin. Chaumont lived in Jefferson county for 
years, and Mr. Hanson was strongly of the opinion (though without 
demonstrating at all clearly that he had good grounds for it) that his 
presence there was to observe Mr. Williams and to report to France 
concerning him. 

Mr. Hanson became convinced also that Eleazer Williams's schooling 
at Long Meadow, Mass., had been paid through a mysterious channel, 
which he conjectured would eventually be traced to Belanger. He makes 
a good deal of the point that, according to his belief, the education of 
Eleazer was paid for differently and by parties other than those who 
met the cost of the brother's schooling. 

In December, 1852, Mr. Williams visited Mr. Hanson twice in New 
York city, and repeated and amplified the story already recited. In 
this second recital Mr. Williams stated that at Green Bay in 1841 
Prince de Joinville laid before him a parchment, with wax, pen and ink 
and a governmental seal of France used under the old monarchy — the 
document on parchment being written in French and English in parallel 
columns, and the purport of which " was a solemn abdication of the 
crown of France in favor of Louis Philippe, by Charles Louis, the son 
of Louis XVI., who was styled Louis XVII., king of France and 
Navarre, with all accompanying names and titles of honor according to 
the old French monarchy, together with a minute specification in legal 
phraseology of the conditions and considerations and provisos upon which 
the abdication was made. These conditions were, in brief, that a princely 
establishment would be secured to me either in this country or in 
France, at my option, and that Louis Philippe would pledge himself 
on his part to secure the restoration, or an equivalent, of all the private 
property of the royal family rightfully belonging to me, which had been 
confiscated by France during the revolution, or in any way got into other 
hands." . The proposition so staggered Mr. Williams that it did not 
occur to him to keep the document, or even to make a copy of it, for 
which the Prince de Joinville's absence from the room from time to 
time afforded opportunity; but he was so wholly absorbed, as he told 
Mr. Hanson, with the question of acceptance or rejection that he thought 



Eleazer Williams 685 

of nothing else. At length he announced to the prince that " though I 
am in poverty and exile I will not sacrifice my honor." Indignant and 
stormy protest and altercation followed, but when Mr. Williams reminded 
the prince that upon his own statement he was the superior the prince 
accepted the rebuke meekly and at once assumed a respectful and defer- 
ential manner. They finally parted for the day with request by the 
prince that Mr. Williams reconsider. The next day the prince renewed 
the proposition, which was again declined. 

Unfortunately this interview and negotiation had no witness other 
than the Prince de Joinville and Mr. Williams, whose version of it is 
as here recited. We shall see further on the character given to' it by the 
prince. 

Mr. Williams informed Mr. Hanson that he met Chaumont in 1820 
or 1821, and was then told by him that a member of the royal family of 
France was in this country. 

Mr. Hanson gives credence to reported special efforts made by emi- 
nent French prelates in Boston and Montreal to persuade Mr. Williams 
to renounce Protestantism and take orders in the Catholic Church, these 
prelates having been known to be convinced that the Dauphin was in 
the United States. Mr. Hanson disbelieves that they would have been 
so much concerned to win over Mr. Williams if they had deemed him 
to be only an ordinary person, or an Indian or a "breed." 

Mr. Hanson refers to correspondence which Mr. Williams claimed to 
have had with French cardinals and bishops, with Louis Philippe him- 
self, and with other persons of rank and consequence in France, but 
with regretful admission that most of the letters related only to historical 
matters, and that all of them had been lost or burned. 

One more incident told by Mr. Williams remains to be related. In 
1799 Thomas Williams went from Caughnawaga, as usual, to hunt in 
the vicinity of Lake George, and while encamped there was visited by 
two strange gentlemen, one of whom was a Frenchman who sought an 
interview with Eleazer, embraced him tenderly, kissed him, and wept 
over him — finally examining his feet, ankles" and knees closely, and 
presenting him with a piece of gold. Eleazer could not understand what 
the gentleman said, because he spoke in French, but his subsequent 
conjecture was that the man must have been Belanger. 

Shortly afterward, upon their return to Caughnawaga, there was a 
caller at night at the Williams home. Lying in bed, Eleazer heard the 
conversation, which he told Mr. Hanson was a discussion between the 
caller and his reputed father and mother whether the latter would per- 
mit some of their boys to go to Long Meadow, Mass., to be educated. The 



686 History of Franklin County 

mother would not hear to it at first, but at length consented that " the 
strange boy" (Eleazer) might go, but that she would not be separated 
from John. It was, however, arranged ultimately that both John and 
Eleazer should go. Mr. Williams remembered also having overheard a 
conversation in Albany between Thomas Williams and an old Indian 
trader, in which the latter referred to his having been at Lake George 
when Eleazer was brought there in 1795 by a stranger, and in which 
conversation the trader said that the boy was not an Indian. 

Two or three weeks after the interview; of Mr. Williams with Mr. 
Hanson the substance of which has here been stated, Mr. Williams sub- 
mitted his journal (which be had kept since 1808) to Mr. Hanson, and 
the latter quotes at length from it concerning the Prince de Joinville's 
negotiation with Mr. Williams at Green Bay. The journal account and 
Mr. Williams's oral statement about it are substantially identical. 

Mr. Hanson says : " Mr. Williams has never tried to make capital of 
his story," and, again, that Mr. Williams's knee had been examined by 
himself in the presence of two physicians, and that it had the deep 
indented scars of a scrofulous tumor ; the disease must have been severe, 
as the leg down to the instep was blackened with it. 

Mr. Hanson emphasizes that at the age of ten years the Dauphin had 
been reduced to idiocy by ill treament, and tbat Eleazer was idiotic at 
the age of thirteen or fourteen. 

In the April Putnam's of the same year Mr. Hanson returned to the 
subject, making an impressive attempt to demonstrate that the Dauphin 
did not die in the prison of the Temple. Desault, who Mr. Hanson says 
was the most celebrated surgeon of his time, and incapable of deception 
or misrepresentation, had attended the Dauphin in early May, 1795, 
and is quoted by Mr. Hanson as having declared that scrofula had 
scarcely imprinted its seal on the 'constitution of the Dauphin at that 
time, whereas the report of the autopsy of a month later pronounced 
the disease to have long existed and to have been deep seated. On this 
point alone does Mr. Hanson seem to show inconsistency, having in his 
previous article dwelt upon the marked evidence afforded by examina- 
tion of Mr. Williams's person of his having suffered severely from 
scrofula, while now he presents the findings of three physicians who. 
at the request of Mr. Hanson, had examined Mr. Williams critically, 
and were agreed that while they found that he bore all of the scars and 
markings which Desault had described as found by him on the person 
of the Dauphin, these were apparently not due to the ravages of scrofula, 
but to bodily severities inflicted or consequent upon a protracted con- 
finement in impure or deteriorated air, restricted or bad diet, and other 



Eleazee Williams 687 

deprivations, and to incised wounds. In view of Mr. Hanson's extreme 
care in all other phases of his presentation of the case, it seems inex- 
plicable that in February he should have undertaken to strengthen the 
claim of identity upon the basis of the report of the autopsy, and two 
months later should shift the argument to make it fit Desault's findings 
and disagree with the autopsy. 

In the April article Mr. Hanson includes the reply made by the 
secretary of the Prince de Joinville to Mr. Williams's version of the 
Green Bay interview, which was in effect a flat denial. The prince's 
secretary declared that the interview related solely to historical incidents 
and events relative to French discoveries and movements in America, 
and his letter implies that the meeting between the two was by chance 
only. There is abundant evidence altogether outside of statements made 
by Mr. Williams that, instead of having been accidental, the meeting 
had been deliberately sought by the Prince de Joinville and fully planned 
by him. Mr. Hanson seized upon this error or falsehood in the secre- 
tary's communication, and, upon the maxim of false in one false in all, 
insisted that the representation that the interview had to do only with 
American historical matters is to be discredited, and that Mr. Williams 
is to be regarded as the more trustworthy witness relative to what 
actually transpired. Whether the secretary was not fully informed, 
whether his implication as to the meeting having been accidental wa- 
merely inadvertent, or whether in superserviceable zeal he purposely 
exceeded the bounds of truth in this regard, can not be known, because 
neither he nor the Prince de Joinville ever alluded to the matter again 
publicly. In any case, there is and was no competent witness other than 
the prince and Mr. Williams to what passed between Ihem ;'t Green 
Bay. The issue of veracity is thus squarely between these two, with 
only the intrinsic probabilities to aid any one in judging between them. 
As bearing upon this point, it is admitted that the Prince de Joinville 
bore a high reputation, and it is to be remembered also that Mr. Wil- 
liams had acquired a wide reputation of being particularly well informed 
concerning the labors and movements of early French explorers and 
missionaries, and as an authority on the subject. Was it a mere incident 
of the interview, or is it to be thought a confirm ti n of the prince's 
characterization- of it, that very soon after his departure from Green 
Bay Mr. Williams wrote to him at New York, apparently in fulfillment 
of a promise, giving information about La Salle and Charlevoix, while 
the prince sent to Mr. Williams, also by prearrangement, certain books 
relating to similar matters? 

It would be unfair to fail to state that trustworthy witnesses testified 



688 History of Franklin County 

that members of the prince's retinue were manifestly greatly impressed 
by Mr. Williams's appearance, and that the bearing of the prince him- 
self in Mr. Williams's presence suggested that he deemed him to 
deserve most respectful consideration, if not genuine deference. 

What is the other side of the case? 

Eev. Charles F. Eobertson was rector of St. Mark's Church, Malone, 
a half century ago, and was administrator of Eleazer Williams's estate, 
which was pitifully small except in manuscripts. The appraisal on file 
in the office of the surrogate of Franklin county valued it at $119.75, 
and the accounting showed that it realized $162.34. Books, pamphlets, 
etc., comprised $76.87 of the total, and household effects almost all of 
the remainder, except for one " silk embroidered robe said to have been 
worn by Marie Antoinette, $10." Nearly every article enumerated is 
described as " old," and a number of them as " cracked " or " broken." 
Everything was apparently of the commonest sort, hardly more or 
better, except in books, than the probable contents of the poorest hovel 
on the St. Eegis reservation to-day. Apart from the books, which sold 
for $76.87, the only distinctive articles in the lot were " one plate of 
Louis XVI. and family," valued at fifty cents ; " tin box with journal 
and other manuscripts," which brought three dollars ; and eight boxes 
of old manuscripts, which brought $19.51. Eight articles of britannia 
table ware are all that suggest that formerly Mr. Williams's circum- 
stances and style of living may have been more pretentious. The debts, 
due to Alfred Fulton and Samuel Barlow of Hogansburgh, amounted 
to. $228.52, and the expenses of administration were $56.23, leaving 
$106.11 to be divided pro rata between the creditors. The papers show 
that Mrs. Williams of Green Bay, Wis., was dead, and that the only 
heir was the son, John. 

Mr. Eobertson became the bishop of the diocese of Missouri at about 
this time, and removed to St. Louis. He was a man of engaging per- 
sonality, of brilliant mind, and fine literary accomplishments. In 1868 
he published in Putnam's Magazine an article, which while hardly 
expressing an opinion of the writer except by the implication of its 
title, viz., " The Last of the Bourbon Story," must yet, as it seems to 
me, carry conviction to any unprejudiced mind that there is not the 
slightest reasonable ground for belief that Mr. Williams was the lost 
Dauphin. Almost everything that Mr. Eobertson set forth as having a 
bearing on this point was derived from Mr. Williams's Ovm original 
papers. 

While it is true that the church records at Caughnawaga do not 
show the birth and baptism of Eleazer Williams, the record there is 



Eleazer Williams 689 

otherwise not as represented by Mr. Williams to Mr. Hanson. That is, 
it does not show births in the family regularly every two years. On 
the contrary, it gives no Williams birth at all between 1786 and 1791, 
an interval quite as remarkable, in view of the regularity of births in 
other periods, as the church omission concerning Eleazer. In this con- 
nection, it is well perhaps to note that a Mr. Williams of Roxbury, 
Mass., who says that his grandfather knew Eleazer Williams well, wrote 
to The Nation in 1891 that this grandfather told him that Rev. Father 
Marcoux explained to him at Caughnawaga in 1851 that the records of 
the mission there were incomplete, and that they contained nothing as 
to children who had been born outside of the parish. Mr. Williams's 
letter to The Nation stated further that in 1851 an investigation had 
been had at Caughnawaga concerning the birth of Eleazer before a 
notary named McNab, who could himself speak the Indian language, 
and who examined the witnesses separately and alone, so that ho one 
of them knew the story that another had told. Mr. Williams states, on 
the authority of his grandfather, that two of these Avitnesses testified 
that they had personally been present at the birth of Eleazer, which 
they said occurred at Lake George, and one testified that the scars on 
his knees and legs were from wounds sustained in his fall from a high 
rock at Lake George. The tale continues that when Mr. McNab read 
the depositions to Eleazer's mother she cried, and said that though she 
had known that Eleazer had done many bad things she had not thought 
that he would deny his own mother. 

Mr. Robertson stated in his paper in Putnam's that the original bills 
and appropriations for Eleazer Williams's schooling at Long Meadow 
not only did not show (what Mr. Hanson deemed so remarkable and 
significant) that they had been paid mysteriously and by an unknown 
party, but that they affirmatively and conclusively established that his 
own and his brother John's expenses were met through identically the 
same source and channels ; and Dr. Robertson's article declares that it 
is absolutely certain that both brothers were educated wholly at the 
charge of benevolent societies in Massachusetts, with a view to their 
future Christianizing work among the Indians. Moreover, Dr. Robert- 
son says that published representations to the contrary are shown by 
Mr. Williams's manuscripts to have been prepared by himself, and sent 
out by him for publication anonymously, and as if written by a third 
party. 

Dr. Robertson pointed out also in his article that whereas Mr. Wil- 
liams represented to Mr. Hanson in 1853 that he had never even heard 



690 History of Franklin County 

that he was of royal birth until so told by the Prince de Joinville in 
1841, a reputable gentleman of Buffalo published a letter maintaining 
that Mr. Williams had declared to him in 1838 or 1839 that he was the 
son of Louis XVI., and Dr. Robertson says one copy of the Williams 
journal, at a date earlier than 1841, that had come to him as adminis- 
trator of the estate, contained substantially the sentiments, and in the 
same language, that Mr. Williams had attributed to the Prince de 
Joinville in his story to Mr. Hanson. 

Without assuming to pass upon the significance that should attach to 
the fact, it is at least an interesting circumstance that, as stated by Dr. 
Robertson, the -Williams journal, as turned over to the administrator, 
was a double affair, consisting of two copies which were not in all 
respects the same, and the leaves of which were simply stitched loosely 
together, which would make alterations easy, or even permit substitu- 
tion of entirely new pages for those originally written. 

Dr. Robertson directs attention also to the fact that, although much 
inquired after, none of the original medals or documents which Mr. 
Williams claimed to have had were ever produced by him, but that he 
always explained that they had been accidentally burned or mysteri- 
ously stolen. 

Again, while Mr. Williams had pretended to Mr. Hanson that he had 
been strongly opposed to bringing his claims before the public, his 
papers in Dr. Robertson's possession proved that he had been con- 
tinually obtruding the matter himself in the newspapers for years 
through anonymous communications, which were made to appear as if 
prepared by disinterested parties; and in one letter, over his own signa- 
ture, Mr. Williams had suggested to his correspondent that a speech in 
Congress portraying him as the descendant of Louis XVI., and dwelling 
upon the great assistance that this monarch had given the United 
States in the war for independence, would be calculated to help 
materially the passage of measures allowing his claims against the 
government. 

Except for the account of his interview with the Prince de Joinville, 
neither the journal nor any of the papers or letters of Mr. Williams 
contain the slightest reference to his alleged royal lineage until 18J8. 
For seven years he had been as silent as the grave on the matter, and 
then it appears to have obsessed him. Five or six years later, so strong 
had its hold become upon him, he affected royal practices in his cor- 
respondence, signing himself " L. C." (Louis Capet), and even pre- 
paring manifestoes and proclamations, though not giving publicity to 
them. His journal in this period even assumes to recite the precise 



Eleazer Williams 691 

circumstances of his escape from the prison of the Temple, and in 
other items purports to give history in the most serious manner along 
lines which no authentic records confirm. Dr. Robertson thought that 
probably, through constant dwelling upon the subject, he came finally 
himself to believe fully in what had been previously pure pretension. 
Either Mr. Williams actually believed, or for some unknown reason 
fabricated the charge, that an attempt was made in Philadelphia in 
1856 to poison him, and that in 1858 he narrowly escaped assassination 
in Washington by an agent and spy of the French emperor. These 
stories were set out in his journal with no little circumstantiality, but 
they carried no proof, nor were they corroborated by any news dis- 
closures of the time. 

Mary Ann Williams, the reputed Indian mother of Eleazer, made 
affidavit before Justice Alfred Fulton, a substantial and wholly trust- 
worthy resident at Hogansburgh, that Eleazer was her natural .son. 
Subsequently she made a second affidavit before the same magistrate, 
contradicting some of the statements contained in the first affidavit, 
and referring to Eleazer as her adopted son. Mr. Robertson com- 
municated with Mr. Fulton on the subject, who replied that at the 
making of the first affidavit Rev. Father Marcoux had acted as inter- 
preter, and that, so far as Mr. Fulton could determine with his imperfect 
knowledge of the Indian tongue, had interpreted her correctly. At the 
making of the second affidavit, when Mr. Fulton entered the room, 
Eleazer and an interpreter were discussing what Indian word should 
be used to signify " adopted." Mr. Williams's papers held by Dr. 
Robertson showed that this second affidavit was drawn by Eleazer Wil- 
liams himself, and of this circumstance Mr. Hanson makes no mention. 
Mr. Fulton stated further in his letter of reply to Dr. Robertson that 
he never thought that Mrs. Williams intended to say that Eleazer was 
an adopted son, and that she herself subsequently denied to Mr. Fulton 
that she had intended to so state, and manifested surprise that Eleazer 
should have claimed to be other than her natural son. 

Dr. Robertson says that neither Mr. Williams's wife nor his son had 
any faith in his royal pretensions. 

A power of attorney, executed in 1852, by Mary Ann Williams, is of 
record in the office of the county clerk of Franklin county at Malone, 
N\ Y., making " my son, Rev. Eleazer Williams, of Green Bay, Wis.," 
her attornev to collect her claim pending in Congress. 

In 1851 and for some later years my father, the late Joel J. Seaver, 
was attorney or agent to distribute the annuities allowed by the State 
to the St. Regis Indians, which then amounted possibly to five or six 



692 History of Franklin County 

dollars per head. For some reason he had refused to treat Mr. Williams 
as a member of the tribe ; perhaps he believed him to be the Dauphin, 
or perhaps only regarded his long affiliation with the Oneidas as having 
severed any connection that he might ever have had with the St. Regis. 
I have now before me the original letter written by Mr. Williams to 
Mr. Seaver, from which I quote : " In regard to my claims of the 
money, T was not so anxious to receive the paltry sum as I was to have 
my case (as a member of the tribe) brought before the present trustees 
of the tribe in order to ascertain whether they do or do not consider me 
as a member. All the acting agents before Mr. Wheeler and yourself 
never doubted or hesitated in the least to give me my share of the money 
when present. Upon what grounds that you, sir, 'entertain the 
strongest doubts ' of my being a member of the tribe, you do not state. 
If I am a son of Thomas Williams (a chief), which has never been 
proved as yet to the contrary," etc., etc. — arguing that in such case he 
should be paid one part of the annuity. This letter, though not assert- 
ing positively Mr. Williams's Indian origin, nevertheless reads rather 
strangely as compared with the rejoinder which he says that he made 
to the Prince de Joinville when offered a king's fortune and a regal 
income. Then he would not " sacrifice his honor " at any price, but 
now he would consent to be rated as an Indian for " a paltry sum." 

In IS!) 3 Elizabeth E. Evans published one of those so-called his- 
torical novels, creations having only the flimsiest foundation o'f fact, 
but with a magnificent superstructure of dreams and imagination, and 
in reviewing the book in 1894 The Nation makes statements which -are 
interesting. The review was manifestly written by one who felt sure 
of his ground, and it impresses the reader as authoritative. It declares 
that in the rooms of the Wisconsin Historical Society at Madison there 
is a truukful of Mr. Williams's own manuscripts (doubtless the same 
ones that Dr. Eobertson had had) which betray completely the falsity 
of his claim to be the Dauphin. The article says also that in a written 
application for admission to the Masonic order Mr. Williams gave 1792 
as the date of his birth, whereas it will be remembered that the Dauphin 
was born in 1785. The review quotes Mrs. Williams, herself of French 
extraction, as saying that Mr. Williams could not speak a word of 
French correctly; and it quotes an acquaintance of Mr. Williams to the 
effect that while always making an effort to turn his toes out in walking, 
he would, forgetting himself, soon turn his toes in, Indianlike. 

Eeferring again to the letter of Mr. Williams, of Roxbury, Mass., to 
The Nation, from which quotation has already been made, it is stated 
therein that as early as 1810 Eleazer Williams called himself the 



Eleazer Williams 693 

" Count de Lorraine," and wore on his breast a large tinsel star. It is 
also declared that the writers grandfather, in discussing Eleazer AVil- 
liams with Indians at Caughnawaga, had found that he was "in bad" 
with them because of a habit he had of collecting money for them for 
specific purposes, and then applying it to his own uses. The Letter 
explains that the feelings of adherents of the Eomish faith toward 
Eleazer Williams was not one of enmity, but of relief to be rid of a 
black sheep. 

A book concerning the lost Dauphin and Mr. Williams was published 
by Publius V. Lawson in Wisconsin in 1905. Mr. Lawson himself 
believed strongly in the royal lineage of Mr. Williams, and yet he 
quotes John Y. Smith, who had known Mr. Williams for ten years at 
Green Bay, as follows: "He was a fat, lazy, good-for-nothing Indian; 
but cunning, crafty and fruitful in expedients to raise the wind. 1 
doubt whether there was a man at Green Bay whose word commanded 
less confidence than that of Eleazer Williams. * * * Williams would 
have passed for a pure Indian, with just a suspicion of African in his 
complexion and features." 

Also the following from Gen. Albert G. Ellis : " Eleazer Williams 
was the most perfect adept at fraud, deceit and intrigue that the world 
has ever produced. * * * He was built very much like a hogshead, 
and tapering a little both ways ; and if you could have seen him eat 
you would have thought him about as hollow." 

Also from Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan: "1 have known him 
for almost thirty years. His color, features and the conformation of 
his face testify to his Indian origin." 

In opposition to the judgments of Mr. Smith and Gen. Ellis is to be 
set the fact that inquiries made by Mr. Hanson all elicited unqualified 
testimonials to Mr. Williams's good repute, and Mr. Hanson himself 
believed him to be of so simple a mind that he was incapable intel- 
lectually, to say nothing of his morals, of originating such a story as 
he told, or even of comprehending the significance of its several links 
when joined together until it was pointed out to him. 

According to Mr. Lawson, Mr. Williams had many fine household 
articles when he lived in Wisconsin — most of them gifts from abroad. 
They included brass, silver and exquisite china. Some of these were 
picked up from time to time by collectors, and are still owned in 
Wisconsin. 

Mr. Lawson also tells that while living in the vicinity of Green Bay 
Mr. Williams ran into debt with a trader to the amount of $1,285.03, 
for which the trader obtained judgment; and that Mr. Williams sought 



694 History of Franklin County 

and obtained help from Amos Lawrence of Boston, Mass., to avert a 
sale of his lands to satisfy the judgment. Mr. Williams claimed that 
his agreement with Mr. Lawrence was that in consideration of his taking 
up the judgment he was to have a half interest in the lands; but that 
later he sold Mr. Williams out under the judgment, and took every- 
thing. These lands comprised 4,800 acres, and are said now to be worth 
a million dollars. 

It is believed by Mr. Lawson that Mr. Williams was a member of a 
Masonic lodge at Fort Howard, Wis., which ceased to exist in 1830, and 
whose records can not now be found. Mr. Williams's application for 
membership, however, is in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical 
Society, and, inferentially, is probably the document referred to by 
The Nation as stating 1792 as the year of his birth. Mr. Williams's 
grave at Hogansburgh is marked by a marble slab which at the top 
bears the carving of a square and compass, followed by the inscription : 
" Eleazer Williams. Died August 28, 1858." Mr. Lawson states that 
this stone was erected by his son. The funeral of Mr. Williams was 
conducted by Aurora Lodge, F. and A. M., of Fort Covington. 

It seems to be agreed by all writers on the subject that the removal 
of the Oneida Indians from New York was at least in consonance with 
a project conceived by Southerners in Congress to make Wisconsin a 
great Indian reservation, so that it should not become an applicant for 
admission into the Union as a free State, and the writer in The Nation 
from whom I have quoted declares that it was Mr. Williams's ambition 
or dream to unite the tribes to be assembled in a single great league, 
over which he himself was to be the uncrowned king. 

Rev. Amos C. Treadway, for many years rector of St. Mark's Church, 
Malone, was a firm believer that Mr. Williams was the Dauphin. 

Whatever else may be said or thought of Mr. Williams, there is no 
doubt that he was the leading Indian orator of his time, and also an 
eminent authority concerning the movements and works in the L T nited 
States of the early French explorers and missionaries. 

Regarding the robe that Mr. Williams had, which was said to have 
been worn by Marie Antoinette, it was worn by Miss Mary Lincoln of 
Fort Covington (afterward Mrs. Wyatt, of Fon-du-Lac, Wis.) upon the 
occasion of an amateur presentation of the play Richard the Third in 
Fort Covington, and also by Miss Mattie Lindsay at a masquerade ball 
in Malone. In disposing of Mr. Williams's effects Dr. Robertson, as 
administrator, had the robe cut into pieces. Sold thus, it brought $23. 
Mrs. Alice Knapp Knowlton, of Malone, has or had one of the pieces. 
WTiere the other fragments went is unknown. 



Eleazer Williams 695 

Presuming that Thomas Williams was in fact the father of Eleazer, 
and granting that the latter's appearance was more Caucasian than 
Indian (which was as vigorously denied by some as it was asserted by 
others), this peculiarity is really not difficult to account for. With a 
white great-grandmother and a white grandfather, a reversion to type, 
even if there were not such reversion in the cases of brothers and 
sisters, would not be at all unusual, as like examples in heredity are 
frequently known. They appear so often, indeed, even after the lapse 
of more than one generation, as not to be regarded as at all remarkable. 
" Children throw back beyond the immediate sire to earlier and finer 
members of the family." Of course, the alleged strong resemblance to 
the Bourbons which Mr. Williams is said to have shown is another 
matter, and no one has ever undertaken to explain it beyond suggesting 
that it may have been merely a fancy or a coincidence. 



CHAPTER XXXI 
LUTHER BRADISH 

Nearly three-quarters of a century has passed since Luther Bradish 
ceased to be a resident of Franklin county. The precise date of his 
removal is undeterminable, though records are available which fix his 
residence in Moira as late as 1841, and which show him to have estab- 
lished his home at Throw's Neck, Westchester county, certainly not 
later than 1843. Influential, commanding and even dominating here at 
one time, he has yet been all but forgotten. Outside of Moira and other 
than by a few elsewhere who chance to know his record, the name is 
strange and his service unfamiliar. But his part in public affairs was 
so conspicuous, and local tradition represents him so fine and attractive 
a figure, that excuse need not be made for giving here a sketch of his 
life. 

Unfortunately Mr. Bradish left no written work or speech, so far as 
I have been able to ascertain, by which his ability may be measured. 
Whether, with his other accomplishments, he possessed the gift of 
oratory, none of the political historians of his time say, though they all 
testify unreservedly to his high character, to the eminently satisfactory 
discharge of the duties of the several offices that he filled, and to his 
admirable personal qualities. Hammond, a political opponent, declares 
that "no purer man ever lived," and another writer speaks of him as 
"the finished gentleman." He was the associate in politics on equal 
terms in stirring times of men of the rank of Thurlow Weed, and of 
Millard Fillmore and William H. Seward in statecraft. 

Luther Bradish was the son of Colonel John Bradish, and was born 
at Cummington, Hampshire county, Mass., September 15, 1783. He 
was graduated from Williams College in 1804, by which institution he 
was subsequently honored with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. He 
located in the city of New York, studied law. and was admitted to the 
bar. In October, 1814, he enlisted as a private in the State militia, and 
was in service, on the Niagara frontier, as shown by pay-roll in the 
adjutant-general's office at Albany, for a period of two months. After 
his discharge he taught school in the western part of the State for a 
short time. 

Luther Bradish first became identified with Franklin county in 1815 
by the purchase jointly with others of 28,284 acres of land (except 

[696] 



Luther Bradish 697 

4,357 acres previously sold to or reserved for settlers) in the town of 
Moira, which comprised all of the then unsold lands in that town. The 
price paid for the entire tract, which was practically all wilderness, 
was $12,600, or about fifty cents per acre. Subsequently he acquired 
the holdings of his partners in this venture, and in 1816 purchased 
eleven or twelve hundred acres in the southeast quarter of Bangor. 
From 1816 to 1845 he was grantee to other smaller parcels in con- 
siderable number in Bangor, Bombay, Fort Covington and Moira, and 
the last of his holdings in Franklin county was not disposed of until 
1859, though in 1835 he sold to Henry X. Brush (whose guardian he 
had been previously) about all of his original purchase, with the excep- 
tion of small tracts that had been parted with theretofore, and also lands 
owned by him in Dekalb, St. Lawrence county, for $53,915.38. 

While Mr. Bradish did not establish his residence in Franklin county 
until 1826, at which time he was a widower, he unquestionably visited 
Moira as early as 1817, as a receipt given by him for money, dated at 
that place in that year, came into the possession of the late Clark J. 
Lawrence of Malone some years ago. It was given to Jonathan Law- 
rence, the grandfather of Clark J. 

Mr. Bradish located his home in Moira about two and a half miles 
north of the site of the present village, on the farm now (1918) owned 
and occupied by James Finnigan. The buildings which he erected were 
destroyed by fire a few years ago. The period covered by his residence 
in Moira was about fifteen years. We know that he came in 1826, and 
the last deed given by him with Moira stated as his residence was dated 
in 1838, while his next eonveyance recorded in Franklin county recites 
the place of his residence as Throg's Neck, and is dated 1843. But the 
accounts of Clark Lawrence, deceased, as postmaster show transactions 
with him running into 1841 ; and inasmuch as Mr. Bradish is not 
charged subsequently by Mr. Lawrence for postage it is presumable that 
he ceased to live at Moira in the year last mentioned. 

Mr. Bradish's establishment at Moira was a pretentious one, though 
probably with less social activity and display than his political and 
official prominence and extensive acquaintance would have induced if 
there had been a Mrs. Bradish. None of his contemporaries survive, 
and there is no record to disclose what conferences and plannings his 
home witnessed, though it is known that Governor Seward visited him 
in 1839. Only here and there is now to be found an elderly man who 
remembers vaguely having in boyhood seen Mr. Bradish, and a some- 
what larger number who recall distinctly the almost venerating regard 
with which his townsmen and associates used to speak of him. Of 



698 History of Franklin County 

imposing presence, courtly manners, gracious and benign consideration 
for others, entertaining in reminiscences of extensive travel and public 
affairs, erudite in politics and law, and a master among men, he became 
with his first appearance in the county a popular leader and exercised 
a commanding influence. Whether he should be regarded as the ablest 
man that this county has ever given to the public service, no adequate 
record remains to afford a basis for judgment, but it probably may be 
safely claimed for him that he was at the least the most accomplished, 
and that no one here has surpassed him in personal popularity and in 
the public estimation which it is worth while to gain and hold. He had 
lived here barely a year when he was elected to the Assembly, and he 
served in that body in .1828, 1829 and 1830. With Thurlow Weed he 
was one of the organizers of the anti-Masonic party, and in 1S30 he 
was the candidate of that party in this district (then composed of 
Clinton, Essex, Franklin and Warren counties) for Congress, but was 
defeated by William Hogan, of Hogansburgh, a Jackson Democrat. 
This result was due in part, undoubtedly, to the prestige of President 
Jackson, and also to the very great influence of Silas Wright, of Canton, 
who even thus early had a considerable power in Franklin county. 
From 1830 to 1836 Mr. Bradish was not in public office unless it may 
have been in a purely home way, but in 1835 as a Whig was again 
elected to the Assembly, and was re-elected in 1836 and 1837. In the 
latter year the Whigs had but a scant representation in the Legislature. 
Mr. Bradish was made the candidate of his party for Speaker, and so 
became the minority leader in the Assembly. 

The Democratic canal policy of the period, together with the panic 
of 1837, had angered the people, and consequently the Whigs swept 
nearly every county in the State, and elected all of the Senators then 
chosen, and four-fifths of the members of Assembly. Mr. Bradish was 
made Speaker in 1838, the only man from Franklin county who ever 
came within measurable distance of gaining that distinction. 

With high hopes of carrying the State in 1838, Whig candidates for 
the nomination for Governor were not lacking. William H. Seward 
and Francis Granger were in the lead, but Alexander, in his " Political 
History of New York," says: " There was another formidable candidate 
in the field. Luther Bradish had proved an unusually able Speaker, 
courteous in deportment, and firm and resolute in his rulings at a time 
of considerable political excitement. He had entered the Assembly 
from Franklin in 1828, and, having early embraced anti-Masonry with 
Weed, Seward and Granger, was, with them, a leader in the organization 
of the Whig party. The northern counties insisted that his freedom 



Luther Bradish 699 

from party controversies made him peculiarly available, and, while the 
supporters of other candidates were quarreling, it was their intention, 
if possible, to nominate him." Though Mr. Bradish received a respect- 
able vote in the convention, Mr. Seward was nominated through the 
marvelously persuasive powers and organizing genius of Thurlow Weed. 
Incidentally, it is of interest to note that though one of its citizens was 
a hopeful candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, so little partici- 
pation was there in politics by the general public in those days that only 
a single delegate was present from Franklin county, and, so far as the 
record shows, no body of men from his home were in attendance unoffi- 
cially to work for his success. In similar circumstances to-day about 
every man locally prominent in politics would be on hand to "boom" 
the candidate. Mr. Bradish accepted second place on the ticket, which 
was elected by about ten thousand plurality. The same ticket was 
nominated in 1840, but, owing to unpopular policies formulated and 
pressed by Seward, re-election was won by only half the majority 
secured in 1838, notwithstanding the tremendous excitement and 
whirlwind enthusiasm of the log cabin and hard cider campaign that 
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too " evoked. The next year there was a 
strong revulsion of sentiment, and in 1S4'3 the AVhig convention was 
spiritless and almost hopeless. Alexander says : " Luther Bradish was 
the logical candidate for Governor. Fillmore had many friends present, 
and John A. Collier of Binghamton, alternating between hope and fear, 
let his wishes be known. But Lieutenant-Governor Bradish had won 
popularity by firmness, patience and that tact which springs from right 
feeling rather than cold courtesy; and, in the end, the vote proved him 
the favorite." The campaign developed no enthusiasm on either side. 
The Democrats carried the State by about twenty-two thousand 
majority, and Mr. Bradish never again appeared actively in the field of 
politics. He was, however, made vice-chancellor of the Regents of the 
University of New York in 1842, and about ten years later was 
appointed assistant treasurer of the United States at New York. 

The September (1863) number of the Eclectic Magazine contained 
a steel portrait of Mr. Bradish and a sketch of his life. The portrait 
shows him a man of massive head and large frame ; smooth shaven 
except for slight side whiskers; forehead high, with hair brushed back, 
unparted ; a kindly, almost smiling, countenance, suggestive in every 
line of strength. At the time that the portrait was made Mr. Bradish 
was nearly eighty years of age, but does not look to be over seventy. 
He died at Newport, K. I., in August, 18(13, before the portrait and 



700 History of Franklin County 

accompanying biographical sketch were published. The Eclectic's 
article is here copied : 

"As an attractive embellishment to this first number of the sixtieth 
volume of The Eclectic, we have the pleasure of presenting to our 
readers an admirable portrait of one of the most distinguished and 
respected among our citizens. The original of this portrait has long 
been well and widely known and honored in stations of public trust, 
and revered in the circles and walks of more private life. In former 
years the national government honored him with marked proofs of its 
confidence, by intrusting to him inquiries of great delicacy and impor- 
tance. These, it is due to him to say, were conducted by him with great 
ability and fidelity. We had long been aware that Governor Bradish 
had traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Western Asia, but not 
until we took occasion to make inquiries did we know the particulars 
of his long sojourn abroad, the various countries he visited, the impor- 
tant inquiries intrusted to him, and the valuable services which, in the 
prosecution of those inquiries and the communication of the result, he 
rendered to our national government, and, if we are correctly informed, 
without asking or receiving the smallest pecuniary reward. Well versed 
in the leading languages of Europe, and speaking fluently the Arabic 
tongue, lie was admirably fitted to traverse the Turkish Empire and 
hold extended discussion and intercourse with the Sublime Porte, by 
whom he was uniformly treated with distinguished consideration. The 
valued fruits of these disinterested and patriotic services, are better 
known by the national government at Washington than by the public 
at large. 

" In presenting this portrait in the position which it occupies in the 
engraving we hope to gratify the numerous friends of Governor Bradish, 
and especially the members of the New York Historical Society, over 
whose deliberations he has presided for many years with so much 
dignity and grace, as well as many friends of the American Bible 
Society, over whose sacred interests he has more recently been chosen 
to the high honor of president. We add the long cherished feelings of 
personal regard. At his accession to the chair of the American Bible 
Society, the New York Observer offered its tribute of respect by saying: 
' Governor Bradish has long been distinguished for his administrative 
and executive talents, and as a presiding officer at public meetings he 
has no superior. Thoroughly acquainted with parliamentary law, 
having a commanding presence and dignified, courteous manner, he 
discharges the duties of a president with great ability and propriety. 



Luther Bradish 701 

Governor Bradish is a member of the Episcopal Church, a man of warm 
Christian sympathies, and beloved in every relation of life.' It may add 
interest to the portrait to say that the chair in which Governor Bradish 
appears to be seated in the engraving is the presidential chair of the 
New York Historical Society, which, by permission, was removed to the 
photograph rooms of Mr. Brady for the purpose. This chair has a fur- 
ther historic interest, having been formed from the timbers of the house 
in New York which General Washington was accustomed to make his 
residence while sojourning in this city. It will impart additional inter- 
est to the portrait if we record a few particulars more personal and bio- 
graphical, which we deem quite fitting to the purpose we have in view. 
We are only able to present a brief outline sketch of the well spent life, 
thus far ; of one whom many delight to honor. * * * 

"He entered the profession of law in the city of New York, and soon 
after his admission to the bar he embarked at New York for the West 
Indies and South America. From thence he sailed to England, visited 
Scotland and Ireland, and returned to New York shortly before the 
war of 1312, in which he served as volunteer. In 1814 he married Helen 
Elizabeth Gibbs, daughter of the late George Gibbs, of Newport, P. I. 
In 181G he had the misfortune to lose his wife and only child, a son. 
In 1820, Avith a view to make himself acquainted from personal observa- 
tion with the country and the commerce of the Levant, and for the pur- 
pose of collecting and communicating to the government of the United 
States information preliminary to the establishment, by treat}', of 
amicable and commercial relations with the Sublime Porte at Constan- 
tinople, he embarked at Norfolk on board the United States ship-of-war, 
the Columbus, seventy-four, Commodore Bainbridge's flag-ship, bound 
for the Mediterranean. Joining the United States squadron at Gibral- 
tar, the combined squadron proceeded to make the circuit of the 
Mediterranean, touching at the principal ports on the European and 
African coasts. Returning to Gibraltar, Mr. Bradish was sent, by the 
dispatch vessel of the squadron, through the sea, by the way of Malta 
and the Archipelago, to Smyrna. He proceeded thence overland to the 
Gulf of Nicomedia, and thence across the Sea of Marmora, by the 
Prince's Islands, to Constantinople. An officer of the navy accompanied 
Mr. Bradish from Smyrna to Constantinople for the purpose of taking 
charge ot any communications he might have to make to the government 
of the United States, or to Commodore Bainbridge, the commander of 
the United States squadron in the Mediterranean. 

"At Constantinople, and in excursions thence into the surrounding 



702 History of Franklin County 

country, Mr. Bradish occupied himself actively for five or six months 
in the prosecution of his objects, and in communicating the result to 
his government. He encountered at Constantinople a strong feeling of 
jealousy, on the part of the European nations represented there, with 
the single exception perhaps of Russia, against the establishment by 
treaty of amicable and commercial relations between the United States 
and Turkey. Ancient monopoly viewed with hostile feelings the introduc- 
tion of open competition, and saw, with marked disfavor, the approach 
of a new participator in the profits of trade. 

" Having ascertained the true character and force of these jealousies, 
and being assured of the sincere desire of the Porte for the establish- 
ment of such relations, Mr. Bradish, in an extended communication 
upon the subject, pointed out to his government a mode, different from 
those before attempted and failed, in which the desired treaty could be 
concluded. The mode thus recommended by him was under the admin- 
istration of General Jackson, and Mr. Van Buren as Secretary of State, 
followed, and a favorable treaty of amity and commerce successfully con- 
cluded with the Porte, by Mr. Rhind, on the part of the United States. 
This treaty subsequently was duly ratified by the two governments. 

" Having accomplished his immediate objects at Constantinople, Mr. 
Bradish sailed thence for Egypt. He had introductions to the Viceroy, 
the celebrated Mohammed Ali Pasha. He Avas received and treated by 
him with distinguished kindness and respect. He had frequent personal 
interviews with him, and a subsequent correspondence. * * * 

"Taking leave of Cairo, Mr. Bradish ascended the Nile, passed the 
first and second cataracts, and entered upon the great plain of Sennaar. 
Returning thence to Cairo, he passed the outer desert to the Red Sea, 
and thence through the inner desert to Syria, which he traversed in 
almost every direction. Returning to Beyrout, he embarked again for 
Constantinople, where he again passed some months. Taking final leave 
of the city of the Caesars and the Caliphs, he made the journey, in post, 
on horseback, accompanied by Tartars, across the beautiful plains of 
Adrianople and Bulgaria, the great mountain chain of the Balkan, and 
the Danube, to New Ossova, in Hungary. He traveled thence by Temes- 
war, Presburg and Buda to Vienna. After passing some time in 
this beautiful capital of the Hapsburgs, he proceeded thence by the 
Sclavonian provinces and the Tyrol to Trieste on the Adriatic, and 
thence by Venice, Ancona, Perugia, Narni and Terni to Rome. He 
revisited Naples and its environs; returned to Rome; and after a resi- 
dence of eight months in the Eternal City he recrossed the Appenines 



Luther Bradish 703 

to Tuscany; revisited Florence and the Val d'Arno; and proceeded 
thence to Lombard)-; went into Sardinia; visited Turin and Genoa, and 
returned by Pavia to Milan; visited the Lakes of Conio, Lugano and 
Maggiori; and thence crossed the Alps, by the Simplon, into Switzerland; 
traversed its magnificent mountain glaciers and beautiful valleys; and 
from the Falls of Schaffhausen went, by way of the Black Forest, to 
the Rhine at Strasbourg; crossed into Alsace and proceeded to Paris. 
Irom Paris he passed through Holland, Lngland, Denmark, Sweden 
and Finland to Cronstadt in Northern Russia; and thence to St. Peters- 
uurg, the modern capital of this wonderful empire. Having passed some 
time in this most beautiful city and its environs, he proeeeded to Mos- 
cow, the ancient capital of Russia, and the winter residence of the rich 
.ooyards of the empire. Thence he w ent to \\ arsaw in Poland, and 
iiience, by the Grand Duchy of Posen, to Berim; and thence to Dresden, 
tiie interesting capital of Upper Saxony, where he passed some months. 
Departing thence, he ascended the valley of the Llbe into Bohemia, 
and by loplitz to Carlsbad; thence through Bavaria, Wurtemburg and 
the smaller German States to France. From Paris he proceeded to 
Havre, and embarked for New York, where, in the close of 1826, he 
arrived after an absence of six years. :,: 

" Since the termination of his second term as Lieutenant-Governor, 
Mr. Bradish has not participated actively in party politics, contenting 
himself with exercising his rights, and endeavoring to discharge his 
duties, as a private citizen. He, however, received, unsolicited, from 
his early and much esteemed friend, President Fillmore, the othce of 
United States assistant treasurer for Aew York. Of this office, under the 
following administration, he was relieved by his successor, General Dix. 

"From- the close of 18T3, with the above exception, Mr. Bradish's 
life has been actively devoted to educational, reformatory and charitable 
institutions, in 1811 he was elected first vice-president of the New 
York Historical Society, and on the death of Hon. Albert Gallatin was 
elected its president, in 184? he was elected a vice-president of the 
American Bible Society, and, on the decease of Hon. Theodore Freling- 
huysen, was elected president of the society. These two offices he still 
holds. He is also connected with many other charitable institutions. 
The wise counsels and practical judgment of Governor Bradish have led 
many charitable institutions in the city to elect him as vice-president, 
trustee or a member of some committee, so as to secure his influence and 
wisdom in the management of their affairs. These and other facts which 



704 History of Franklin County 

might be noted indicate the high respect in which he is held in this 
great community. 

" In 1839 Mr. Bradish married Mary Eliza Hart, daughter of the late 
Peter G. Hart, of the city of New York. "By this marriage he has one 
child, a daughter. Thus in the bosom of an endeared family, and in the 
wide circles of many friends, and in the fulfilment of many important 
duties, public and private, Governor Bradish is already crowned with 
gray hairs and with enduring honors." 



CHAPTER XXXII 
WILLIAM ALMON WHEELER 

William Almon Wheeler was born in Malone, New York, June 30, 
1819, the son of Almon Wheeler, a pioneer of Northern New York and 
«, lawyer of distinction, who, however, left no estate except a mortgaged 
homestead. The story of Mr. Wheelers youth would he but a repeti- 
tion of that of so many other eminent Americans — arduous labor at 
.a tender age to discharge his heritage of debt, to contribute to the sup- 
port of the widowed mother and orphaned sisters, and to earn an educa- 
tion. A single specific instance may be mentioned: Having been given 
the fallen timber on a tract a mile distant, he cut therefrom the family's 
supply of fuel for a year, drew it home on a handsled, and worked it up 
into stovewood. A passage from a letter Avritten by himself in his later 
years will bear quoting : " My attire in the cool months was of fulled 
cloth, or, in the vernacular of that da}', 'full cloth' — the product of 
domestic looms. In summer the staple of my wear was flax. * * * 
The outward man was never more complacent than when, on Sabbath 
morn, attired in pants of bleached whiteness, w r ith a pair of Anslem 
Lincoln's ' coarse-fines,' earned by posting his books, and polished with 
blacking manufactured by applying water with a little molasses to the 
bottom of a kettle from the crane of the open fire-place, I wended my 
way to the old church, where 'Father' Parmelee, perched ten feet above 
his hearers in a pulpit shaped like the turret of a monitor, hurled the 
hot shot of the divine law into the rebellious hosts of the ' adversary of 
souls,' at close range, with the fuse cut short." 

Having worked his way through Franklin Academy, Mr. Wheeler 
entered the University of Vermont, but eye trouble compelled him to 
withdraw without graduation. For one period of six weeks when in 
college his only food was bread and water, and his experience then 
prompted the resolution that, so far as he could prevent, no young man 
-struggling for an education should ever so suffer, and after ho came to 
be prosperous he made scores of gifts or loans in fulfillment of that vow. 

Returning from Burlington to Malone, he entered upon study of 
the law, was duly admitted an attorney and. counselor, and practiced 
•successfully for a dozen years or more. Even after business affairs and 

[705] 

23 



706 History of Franklin County 

politics commanded his attention almost exclusively; he was often con- 
sulted on intricate questions by other attorneys and close friends, and 
was deemed one of the soundest and safest counselors in Norther n New 
York. 

Mr. Wheeler became town clerk almost at once upon attaining his 
majority, then town superintendent of schools, and in 1846, by appoint- 
ment, district attorney. In 1847 he was elected to the latter office on a 
union ticket headed by a Democrat for county judge. When he became 
the Whig nominee for the Assembly in 1849 that association led to the 
unfounded charge that he had changed his politics. He was, however, 
elected, and re-elected the year following. In his first term he evinced 
so great legislative aptitude, and came to be so respected for wise and 
prudent judgment and for alert grasp of public questions that admirers 
proposed him for the Speakership the next year, but he had early 
pledged his support to Henry J. Raymond, and refused to be a candidate 
himself. Though the preferment was not sought by him, he was never- 
theless singled out for the floor leadership, and for a merely second- 
term member received the very unusual honor of assignment to the 
chairmanship of the committee on ways and means, the duties of which 
he met with signal ability, and to the pronounced satisfaction of his 
party colleagues. During this period a vigorous and bitter opposition 
to the bridging of Lake Champlain for the Northern (now Rutland) 
and the Central Vermont Railroads developed along the Hudson river 
and in New York city, based upon the contention that such a connection 
would divert the business of Northern New York from the metropolis 
to Boston, but by the great persuasive powers of the man and by sheer 
force of character Mr. Wheeler succeeded in carrying through an act 
authorizing the bridge to be built, More than any other member, he 
brought about the election in 1851 of Hamilton Fish as United States 
Senator. 

Refusing a third term, Mr. Wheeler entered the business of banking 
as cashier of the old State Bank of Malone, a connection which was 
continued for twelve years. In 1853 he became trustee for the mortgage 
bondholders of the Northern Railroad, which made him virtual manager 
of the road for thirteen years, when, upon the order of the supreme 
court in a proceeding which he did not contest, he retired, and by judi- 
cial approval and direction turned over the property to interests which 
had acquired a majority of the stock, and which had sought vainly for 
years to force him out. When he did retire it was upon his own terms, 
approved by the court, one of which was that he receive his salary 
to the end of the term for which he had been appointed trustee, and 



William Almon Wheeler 707 

another that a passenger station to cost forty thousand dollars be erected 
at Malone. 

Mr. Wheeler was the resident agent prior to 1850 for the Olivers of 
Baltimore, who were owners of large tracts of land in Bombay and 
Dickinson. In his dealings with the people who held their farms under 
contract in the former town he was so considerate and forbearing in 
times of distress that in his first spirited campaign for office Bombay 
gave him a large majority notwithstanding the town was usually heavily 
Democratic. Had it voted as it did ordinarily, he would have been 
beaten in the county. Equally fortunate in another way was his connec- 
tion with Mr. Oliver's business in Dickinson. Anxious to close out his 
holdings there, Mr. Oliver fixed a price, and promised to Mr. Wheeler 
all the excess that he might realize. A purchaser was found, and Mr. 
Wheeler's commission proved to be five thousand dollars, which built 
the house that was his home for so many years, and which is now a part 
of the Elks' club house. 

In 1857 Mr. Wheeler was elected to the State Senate as a Bepublican. 
He had been active in organizing the Bepublican party in Franklin 
county in 1855, and was the first candidate of that organization to 
receive a majority in the county. The majority was only twelve, but 
all of the rest of the ticket was beaten. His memorable service in the 
Assembly six years earlier, and the reputation which he had won in 
the meantime as a lawyer, a keen business manager and a sagacious and 
trustworthy politician, caused him to be chosen president pro tempore 
of the Senate, a distinction almost or quite unparalleled considering that 
he had never had previous service in the body. 

A renomination for the Senate was declined, and in 1860 he was elected 
to Congress by the Essex-Clinton-Franklin district, serving with use- 
fulness, though not conspicuously, and giving an unswerving support to 
all war measures and to the general policies of President Lincoln. From 
the capital when Congress was in session he was watchful of all of the 
volunteer organizations in the field from Northern New York, relieving 
the privations of the men, and obtaining promotions where they were 
deserved, and when at home between sessions, and after his term had 
expired for the remaining years of the war, was unceasingly active in 
forwarding the business of recruiting and stimulating popular support 
of the Union cause. 

In 1867 Mr. Wheeler was elected a delegate-at-large to the constitu- 
tional convention of that year, and became its president. The next year 
and then successively until 1876 he was returned to Congress by the 
St. Lawrence-Franklin district, serving with statesmen and intellectual 



708 History of Franklin County 

giants who included James G. Blaine, George F. Hoar, Henry G. Dawes, 
Benjamin F. Butler, Clarkson 1ST. Potter, James B. Beck, Samuel J. 
Kandall and Alexander H. Stephens, and who made the body a much 
more notable one than it now is. While Mr. Wheeler's part was less 
manifest to the general public than that of some others, it was not less 
formulative and controlling. His work was largely in the quiet of com- 
mittees and conferences, respect for his judgment and disinterested sin- 
cerity, together with the personal liking entertained for him by his col- 
leagues, both Democrats and Bepublicans, giving him an influence 
second to none. Nearly everybody called him " Father " Wheeler, and 
sought his advice upon most important measures. Often when a vote 
was about to be taken there would be a group of members gathered at 
his desk, and it is not to be doubted that the quiet talks there had 
determined more votes than all preceding debate combined. He seldom 
spoke except upon bills under his immediate charge that had been 
reported from his committees, and then his statement and argument 
were always lucid and cogent, and commanded close attention. As a 
parliamentarian he ranked with the best that Congress has ever known. 
Less brilliant and less rapid in dispatching business than Mr. Blaine, 
he was safer and more consistent, for it is the fact that Mr. Blaine often 
contradicted himself in his rulings, and yet with an amazing assurance 
and audacity would insist that neither he nor any predecessor in the 
chair had ever held otherwise. I myself clipped from the records for 
Mr. Wheeler every ruling ever made by Mr. Blaine as Speaker, and these 
were classified and indexed in a book which was kept always in Mr. 
Wheeler's desk, ready for instant reference if occasion should arise 
when Mr. Blaine should rule against Mr. Wheeler. The latter recog- 
nized that he would be outclassed and discomfited in a clash with Mr. 
Blaine on a general question, but eagerly looked for and fully expected 
a collision on some parliamentary point. It never came, perhaps because 
Mr. Blaine knew that he would suffer. 

The story of the Blaine-Wheeler estrangement is simple. Until 1873 
the two men had been warm friends. In that year, when Mr. Blaine 
was not persona grata at the White House, Senator Conkling and other 
close friends of President Grant planned to make Mr. Wheeler Speaker 
of the House. The movement was, of course, based more upon enmity 
to Mr. Blaine than upon regard for Mr. "Wheeler, and, with the White 
House influence to back it, threatened to be formidable, and not improb- 
ably successful. Mr. Blaine appealed by letter to Mr. Wheeler to crush 
it, which he did by answering that even if there were no other reason 



"William Almon Wheeler 709 

for not entering upon a canvass for the place, or sanctioning one by 
others, considerations of health would forbid, because he lacked the 
strength to assume the arduous labors incident to the position; and he 
pledged himself unequivocably to Mr. Blaine's support — afterward him- 
self presenting his name to the caucus, with the result that Mr. Blaine 
was elected without opposition. This letter of Mr. Blaine to Mr. Wheeler, 
which I saw and read, contained a virtual, though not explicit, assur- 
ance that if Mr. Blaine were elected he would appoint Mr. Wheeler 
chairman of the committee on appropriations, explaining that this 
assignment could not well go to any one else, especially since, as the 
letter said, Mr. Garfield had been discredited, if not smirched, by the 
Credit Mobilier investigation. But when the time arrived for announc- 
ing the committees Mr. Blaine informed Mr. Wheeler that he had placed 
him again at the head of Pacific Railroads. An angry altercation fol- 
lowed, and with an indignant and absolute refusal to serve on that 
committee, Mr. Wheeler withdrew. A hurried recasting of a part of 
the list had to be made, with the result that Mr. Blaine lost other friends 
besides Mr. Wheeler. Thereafter, there was always a bitter feeling 
between them. 

As chairman of Pacific Eailroads in 1869-72 Mr. Wheeler accom- 
plished a great work along lines where suspicion was apt to be pro- 
voked and where opportunities were present for enrichment, and did 
it without a breath of scandal attaching to him. While one such measure 
was in course of preparation, word reached Mr. Wheeler that a repre- 
sentative of interests to be benefited was in Washington with funds with 
which to buy its passage. Mr. Wheeler sent for the man, and, after 
declaring that the measure was meritorious and had his support, noti- 
fied him that if a single trustworthy whisper of attempted bribery for 
it should reach him he would himself kill the bill. The man left the 
city, and the measure became law on its merits. Afterward the com- 
pany which it was to benefit sought to present Mr. W'heeler a hundred 
thousand dollars of its stock as a testimonial of its appreciation, but 
the offer was of course refused. 

In 1874, when dual Legislatures in Louisiana disputed regularity and 
legitimacy, Mr. Wheeler initiated as a member of a Congressional 
investigating committee the so-called Wheeler compromise, by which 
order was restored in the State. Before unfolding his plan to Louisiana 
parties he outlined it to President Grant, who listened, but vouchsafed 
neither interest nor approval. After waiting patiently for some 
expression of opinion by the President, and none being offered, Mr. 



710 History of Franklin County 

Wheeler withdrew in anger, and with the determination that his shadow 
should never again darken the doors of the White House while General 
Grant occupied it. But the next morning the President sent for him, and 
stated that after having taken time to think the matter over he was con- 
vinced of the feasibility and justness of the plan, and that the whole power 
of the government should be employed to carry it through. It succeeded. 
Mr. "Wheeler did not know until months afterward that when he 
started for New Orleans to unfold his proposition there and urge its 
adoption President Grant had given General Sheridan directions that 
no effort was to be omitted to protect him against every possible danger, 
and that federal soldiers were continually near to interpose between him 
and rough characters who the President thought would not hesitate to 
take his life if they could do it secretly. 

In 1876 Mr. Wheeler was regarded by many as a possible nominee for 
the Presidency, and his selection was urged in some quarters. But he 
himself never took the matter seriously, and, though not actually in 
favor of Senator Conkling, advised that he be given the New York dele- 
gation without opposition. When Mr. Hayes was named for first place, 
New York was looked to as the natural and advisable State to furnish 
the candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and Mr. Wheeler was the State's 
choice. There is no occasion here to argue the merits of the disputed 
result of the election, but it would be improper not to say that Mr. 
Wheeler fully believed that his title to the office was unquestionable and 
that the decision which gave it to him was " as righteous as an edict 
of God." President Hayes purposed at the outset of his administration 
to make Mr. Wlieeler a real factor in it, and invited him to attend the 
meetings of the Cabinet and participate in its deliberations. He did 
attend at one session, but saw, or possibly fancied, that his presence 
was not agreeable to the members, and accordingly never went again. 
As presiding officer of the Senate he was dignified, efficient, respected 
and popular. But in general the office had no attraction for him; he 
used to say that occupancy of it seemed too much like that of an heir 
with great expectations, or like waiting to step into a dead man's shoes. 
Besides the public offices held by Mr. Wheeler, the Governorship of 
New York was in effect declined by him in 1872 because he thought his 
means insufficient to meet the expense attendant upon incumbency of 
the office, and in 1879, when Senator Conkling urged him to give 
countenance prior to the State convention to the movement for the 
nomination of Alonzo B. Cornell, with significant suggestion that if he 
would take such course, it must surely make him United States Senator 



William Almon Wheeler 711 

in 1881 — the suggestion amounting in the circumstances to a promise 
of support — he rejected the overture because he regarded Mr. Cornell's 
nomination as unwise, and also because the proposition carried the 
appearance of bartering a public trust. The same proposition came to 
him again in 1880 as an inducement to him to favor the nomination 
of General Grant for President for a third term, and was declined by 
telegraph, with his decision based not upon hostility to the nomination, 
but upon aversion to bargaining in such a matter. 

In 1881 when Senator Conkling and Senator Piatt resigned in anger 
as a protest against the appointment of William H. Eobertson over their 
remonstrance to be collector of the port of New York, and then sought 
re-election, in the weeks of deadlock that followed Mr. Wheeler was 
the leading candidate against Senator Conkling, but refused to go to 
Albany in his own interest or to do anything for himself, until towards 
the end he accepted an invitation to visit the capital for a conference 
with Governor Cornell, the conclusion of which was that at the opening 
of the then ensuing week the Governor should announce himself a can- 
didate against Senator Piatt, with indorsement of Mr. Wheeler for the 
other place. It was believed that this combination would assure success, 
but before it could be announced President Garfield was shot, and 
Governor Cornell withdrew from the arrangement. Even then many of 
those who were on the inside in the contest had no doubt that Mr. 
Wheeler might still have been elected if he had consented to certain con- 
ditions. Eef using to tie himself in any way, he was beaten. Thereafter 
he had no active particij)ation in politics except quietly in home matters, 
and passed his remaining years, a lonely and disappointed man, though 
not embittered, at his home in Malone. Mrs. Wheeler (who was the 
daughter of William King, and whom he had married in 1845) had 
died in 1876. Their union was childless, and Mr. AVheeler had no close 
relative in the world. He died June 4, 1887, after years of suffering 
from neuralgia and other painful ailments, the immediate cause of 
death having been softening of the brain. 

Generosity was as natural to Mr. Wheeler as breathing, and was regu- 
larly and frequently exercised. No subscription paper was ever pre- 
sented to him for a cause that he thought worthy that he did no; 
in so large an amount as almost shamed the solicitor to accept. Nearly 
every church in Malone was the recipient of gifts from him ranging from 
five hundred dollars each to ten thousand dollars. For a long time he 
gave also a thousand dollars annually to missions. Auburn Theological 
Seminarv received three thousand dollars from him, and a gentleman 



712 History of Franklin County 

whom he employed shortly before his death to arrange and classify his- 
cancelled checks informed me that for many years it had been his prac- 
tice to send twenty-five dollars to every church from which any sort of 
an appeal for aid reached him, regardless of denomination or location. 
There were scores of such checks, and as many to societies in the middle 
or far West as in New York. His benefactions to individuals, and 
particularly to young men seeking education, were innumerable, and 
must have aggregated a great sum. His estate amounted to only about 
eighty thousand dollars, and with the exception of a few personal 
bequests, totaling less than ten thousand dollars, all went to home and 
foreign missions. 

The memory of Mr. Wheeler is not venerated in Malone as he him- 
self was during the years of his activities, and it is of interest to note the 
causes of the change. One was undoubtedly his treatment of his 
physician, the lovable and devoted Theodore Gay, who surrendered his 
practice in order to give him companionship and constant attendance, 
and whose living expenses were increased heavily in deference to his 
patient's wishes. The provision made in the will as recompense was 
felt by everybody to be inadequate, and grieved more than it provoked 
the doctor. The matter was finally compromised by the payment to him 
of ten thousand dollars. Then, too, it was thought that in view of the 
loyal support which the community had always given to Mr. Wheeler 
in his campaigns for office he might better have bequeathed a' part of 
his fortune for home uses than to have given practically all to missions. 
Had there been a provision in the will to establish a local hospital, for a 
public hall, for scholarships at Franklin Academ} r , or for any one of the 
many things that Malone needed or would have liked, sentiment would 
probably have been very different. However, the money was his own,, 
and his right undoubted to dispose of it as he chose. 

Still another ground of criticism or grievance came to be known 
after his death. When he was retiring from Congress upon his election 
to the Vice-Presidency, both Samuel J. Eandall in the House and Justin 
D. Morrill in the Senate proposed to include in the public buildings 
bill an item for the erection of a post-office in Malone, but Mr. Wheeler 
vetoed the suggestion because he had always opposed such appropria- 
tions for small places, and would not stultify himself by accepting one 
for his home town. While this attitude was creditable in a way, not a 
few residents regarded it as overnice, and resented it. 

Though I knew Mr. Wheeler intimately, liked him thoroughly, and 
was in close touch with him in many matters during the last fifteen 
years of his life, my own estimate of him is uncertain in some regards,. 



William Almon Wheeler 713 

.-and not easy of statement. He had great magnetism; the clasp of his 
hand was warm and winning, and even his casual greeting a pleasure to 
be sought and remembered. As a public speaker he lacked the rhythm 
and finish of expression, as well as the spontaneous outpouring of 
thought, that we associate with real oratory, and yet he was one of the 
most popular, persuasive and forceful men on the stump that it was 
•ever my fortune to hear, while in conference he was emphatic and 
dominating to a degree. Concerning any serious question he was always 
tremendously in earnest, which was one of his elements of strength. 
^Nevertheless when a plan of action was under consideration, though he 
was a radical in principle, he was usually conservative (or ought I to say 
timid?) in counsel. He himself would have said that he was merely 
-cautious. In all affairs of State and national politics at least he pro- 
fessed an unbending conscientiousness and fidelity to the very highest 
.standards and ideals, and so squared his conduct. Locally, however, he 
could countenance employment of methods in emergencies that were 
not always savory. Though he preferred and commonly applied mild 
procedure because it gave a better aftermath (a favorite expression with 
him was that molasses would catch more flies than vinegar), yet when 
deeply interested in the candidacy of any one for a local nomination, 
and particularly if the situation seemed desperate, no one could be more 
autocratic or inconsiderate of the character of means to be employed for 
the accomplishment of his ends. Through federal appointees obligated 
to him for their places and through others of his beneficiaries, he usually 
could and did have delegates named to county conventions from a num- 
ber of towns simply upon intimation of what he wanted, and these 
voted readily for any " slate " that he had made. But this does not 
tell the whole story by any means, for everywhere in the county there 
was a genuine liking for the man, a profound respect for his judgment 
and a ready willingness to act in his behalf. Nevertheless it is the fact 
that while he remained active in the field of home politics there was 
seldom a real contest in the primaries for any nomination, and the tick- 
ets presented were Mr. Wheeler's rather than the people's. 

If I were to pronounce an opinion concerning him as a politician in 
the broader field, it would be that he lacked aggressiveness and cour- 
age — which, perhaps, is explicable in part by his morbid and persistent 
belief during the last twenty years of his life that his health was pre- 
carious, and would break utterly if he were to engage strenuous ' 
any undertaking. To such a degree did this feeling abide that more 
than once he would have resigned his seat in Congress, and, as he 
■believed, returned to Malone to die, had it not been for the influence 



714 History of Franklin County 

of his wife and the pressure of friends. Possibly it was this element of 
apprehension that caused him to be passive in the fight against the nomi- 
nation of Mr. Cornell for Governor in 1879, which he might easily have 
prevented. But he would not even request the St. Lawrence delegates 
to vote against Mr. Cornell, though they offered to do so if he should 
ask it. Bitterly inimical to Senator Conkling's political leadership, he 
nevertheless chose to content himself with sneering at it, and refrained 
from openly challenging it. As a legislator there must be great respect 
for his aptitude, abilities and high purposes. To command the leader- 
ship of his party in the Assembly while yet a young man, and serving 
only his second term; to be chosen president pro tempore of the Senate 
in his first term; and to win in Congress a leading place among such 
men as composed that body in his time, admits of no conclusion but 
that he had more than ordinary talent and force of character. Great- 
ness in the degree or of the kind that distinguished Seward, Sumner, 
Thaddeus Stevens and others of the giants who were in public life 
during and immediately after our civil war he may have lacked, but his 
usefulness and influence within his sphere was hardly less than theirs, 
while as regards the cleanliness and incorruptibility of his service no 
one surpassed him. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Frederick P. Allen was born in Tinmouth, Yt., December 23, 1798, 
and became a printer's apprentice in Plattsburgh in 1812 — continuing 
thereafter to work at the trade or in publishing and editing until 1844. 
Mr. Allen participated in the battle of Plattsburgh in 1814, and a cher- 
ished evidence of the fact was a musket granted to him by the govern- 
ment for the service. He came to Malone in March, 1835, and estab- 
lished the Palladium as the successor of the Northern Spectator, which 
a brother had founded and conducted for a couple of years previously. 
He continued in the business until 1844 or 1845, when he sold to 
Francis T. Heath. The employees of such an establishment in those 
days were few, and those that Mr. Allen employed were almost all taken 
into his own home, and made almost members of his family. At least 
two of them he came to regard as foster sons, and they to look to him 
as a father. And throughout his long life he was especially interested 
in the young, watching over many with loving kindness, and proffering 
them advice in a manner that never seemed obtrusive. No more helpful 
citizen in this regard ever lived in Malone. Mr. Allen was for more 
than thirty years a justice of the peace, and his decisions usually stood 
the test of review and appeal, as they were invariably based upon his 
conception of right and justice. In uprightness of life, interest in the 
welfare of the town and its people, in the example he was and the 
influence he exercised, he was a man of remarkable usefulness, and 
commanded respect and even veneration. He was postmaster for three 
years from 1841, and again from 1849 to 1853. He died May 7, 1878. 

William Andrus, born in Malone September 27, 1806, was the son 
of Cone Andrus, an early settler. He drove the mail coach and stage 
for Jonathan Thompson over the route from Plattsburgh to Ogdens- 
burg for a few years earlier than 1832, and in 1840 became himself one 
of the proprietors of the line, which he operated until 1850 or a little 
later. In 1839 he was elected sheriff, and in 1851 and again in 1852 
was defeated for the Assembly, though running largely ahead of his 
ticket against a very popular Democrat. The majority against him in 

[715] 



716 History of Franklin County 

the former year was 82, and in the latter 33. Mr. Anclrus was super- 
visor of Malone for 17 terms, though not of continuous service. In 
1860 he was elected to the Assembly, but in 1861 patriotically declined 
a renomination so that a Union county ticket might be named, with 
Albert Andrus, a Democrat, at its head. Mr. Andrus never engaged 
actively in business apart from stage driving and farming, and except 
also in the sale of village lots carved from the extensive tracts which his 
father had once owned, and which comprised a considerable part of 
that section of the present village lying east of the river. Eeturns from 
investments, the lot sales and farming gave him a competence, and the 
last twenty years of his life were comparatively inactive. Extremely 
social (everybody knew him as "Uncle William*'), and finding his 
greatest enjoyment in calling upon friends at their homes, offices or 
stores, Mr. Andrus probably knew more of the affairs of his neighbors, 
as well as of local public concern, than any other man in the town. 
His judgment was sound, and his character without reproach. He was 
intensely interested in politics, and unswervingly a Whig and Republi- 
can. He died March 10, 1884. 

Albert Andrus was the son of Cone Andrus, who was a pioneer, 
and who gave Arsenal Green to the State. He became a merchant at 
Malone at an early age, after having gained experience as a clerk in 
Vermont and in Michigan. Shrewd, careful and possessed of 'excellent 
practical judgment, his merchandising was successful, and he accu- 
mulated a comfortable fortune as wealth is measured in a rural com- 
munity. He became a director of the 0. & L. C. E. E., and was inter- 
ested largely in banks in Malone and elsewhere. He was the Demo- 
cratic nominee for the Assembly a number of times prior to the civil 
war, but as such was always defeated by small majorities. In 1861 he 
was nominated for the Assembly by the Union party, composed of 
Republicans and war Democrats, was elected, and was re-elected in 
1862 and 1863. He made a fine record, and was recognized as one of 
the leading and most useful members. Franklin county presented his 
name for Senator in 1865, but St. Lawrence county, doubting his 
Republicanism, refused to accept him. He then became an "Andy * 
Johnson man, and for a time was the recognized administration repre- 
sentative in this section, but soon afterward identified himself with the 
Democracy again, and after a few years ceased to take an active interest 
in politics, and devoted himself quietly to business affairs. He died at 
Malone July 19, 1889, in his 75th year. 



Biographical Sketches 71. 

George S. Adams was born in Bangor in 1817, and came to M alone 
in 1844, where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In his 
younger years he was a Democrat, and his suavity and studious avoid- 
ance of antagonisms and controversy made him one of the most popular 
men in the county. For a number of years be was clerk of the board of 
supervisors, and in 1850 was defeated for the Assembly by William A. 
Wheeler, but only by a small majority. He was elected county judge 
by the Knownothings in 1854, and during his term of office became a 
Republican. He removed to Burke, where be kept a hotel and engaged 
in the lumber business, losing the small property that he had accumu- 
lated. Returning to Malone, he again engaged in the practice of the 
law, but never regained his prestige and prominence. He died February 
16, 1888. 

J. Foster Atwood, born in Boyalton, Vt., came to Malone in 184.9, 
and became one of the town's best known, most successful and best 
liked farmers. Genial, companionable and always eager to do a friend 
a service, and intensely interested in music, he won general esteem, and 
enjoyed a wide popularity. 

Oscar P. Ames, born in Salisbury, Vt., March 17, 1841, came to 
Malone in 1857 to learn the printers' trade. During the civil war he 
served as a lieutenant in the 98th regiment until incapacitated by ill 
health, and also for a time as clerk in the commissary department. 
After his return to Malone he engaged for a year or two in the grocery 
business, and then re-entered the employ of the Palladium. In 1877 
he became one of the publishers of the paper, and so continued until 
his death. A man who always did his own thinking, with great tenacity 
of purpose, and of such an intensity of earnestness in any matter that 
excited his interest and seemed to require action that his expression of 
opinion was apt to suggest passionate anger, he was a force to be 
reckoned with, and was an excellent and useful citizen. He was a 
special United States treasury agent for four years from 1890, and 
made an efficient officer. He died January 29, 1899. 

Frank D. Allen, born in Malone January .21, 1802, studied law with 
Judge Hobbs after having graduated from Franklin Academy and 
Hamilton College, and then located in New York city as a clerk in the 
office of Davies & Rapallo, of which firm the late Charles A. Gardiner 
became a member. Upon Mr. Gardiner's retirement from the firm to 
become counsel for the Metropolitan Elevated Eailroad Company, Mr. 



718 History of Franklin County 

Allen went with him to be managing clerk in the office, in which scores 
of attorneys and clerks were employed. Mr. Allen is now with the 
great Interborough Kapid Transit Company as assistant to the attorney 
and counsel — a responsible and highly complimentary position — and 
has "made good" in it. 

Frederick L. Allen, born in Malone November 27, 1863, is a graduate 
of Franklin Academy and Hamilton College; and after admission to 
the bar removed to New York city, where he was associated with Davies, 
Stone & Auerbach for some years. Twenty-odd years ago he was 
appointed assistant to the general solicitor of the Mutual Life Insur- 
ance Company, and about ten years ago was advanced to be himself the 
general solicitor, a remarkable selection for a comparatively young man. 
Mr. Allen has an excellent professional standing at the New York bar, 
and his work in his present position has been of a markedly high grade. 

Roswell Bates, born in Eutland, Vt., June 13, 1788, located as a 
young man at Fort Covington, and not only gained prominence locally 
as a physician as early as 1820, but came to rank high in the profession 
throughout Northern New York. He was a thorough student, and 
painstaking and competent in research and experiment, A number of 
the early physicians of the county studied with him and were trained by 
him. A man of great force of character, stubborn and combative, he 
was often in controversy, and always able to hold his own. He died 
June 6, 1869. 

Daniel Brown, born in Alburgh, Vt., November 5, 1798, came to 
Malone in his young manhood, and in 1828 bought for thirty dollars 
the lot on the corner of Main and Catherine streets, where Hubbard & 
Mallon were for so long engaged in trade, and erected on it a carriage 
and sleigh shop. Mr. Brown lacked the temperament to engage actively 
in politics or conspicuously in public affairs, though he was always 
interested in both, and in an unobtrusive way was helpful by counsel 
and by contributions in promoting village and town matters. As a 
rule, however, his business and the church engrossed most of his atten- 
tion. He had sound judgment, and his walk in life was upright and 
exemplary. He died March 5, 1869. 

Sidney P. Bates was born at Derby, Vt., February 16, 1815. His 
father died before his birth, and his mother only a few weeks after- 



Biographical Sketches , 719 

ward, when he was adopted by an uncle (the father of Dr. Roswell 
Bates of Fort Covington), and came to Malone with him in 1820 or 
1821. He studied medicine with Dr. Roswell Bates, attended lectures 
in Vermont, and then practiced there for seven years — returning to 
Malone in 1847, where he ever afterward made his home. As a physi- 
cian he was in the front rank of the profession in his time, and " his 
tact, management and humor in the sick room were exquisite." His 
interest in educational matters was pronounced, and the work that he 
wrought for the improvement of our common schools was great. He 
was superintendent of schools for the town of Malone for seven years 
under the old township system, and, almost single handed and against 
the combined opposition of practically every man of influence and 
standing in the community, carried through the project for consolida- 
tion of the schools in the village of Malone, and the creation of our 
graded school system. Later he was recognized by everybody as having 
been right, and the change as having been wise. Dr. Bates was school 
commissioner for the first commissioner district from 1861 to 1867, 
and again to fill a vacancy in 1870 — making a fine record. About ten 
years prior to his death he was thrown from his sleigh while returning 
from a night call upon a patient, and sustained injuries which crippled 
him, and after a time confined him to his bed. He died February 1, 
1894. 

Henry N, Brush, born in New York city March 12, 1810, was a 
graduate of Columbia College in the class with Hamilton Fish, and 
located in Moira in 1835. He owned at one time the mile square which 
includes the hamlet of Brushton, originally called Brush's Mills in 
compliment to the owner. After the removal of Luther Bradish, he 
became the foremost man in the town with the exception of Sidney 
Lawrence. An obituary of him in the Palladium at the date of his 
death said: "In all of his instincts a gentleman; a man of infinite 
zest, kind and genial in all his relations/' He died .November 2, 1872. 

H. Corbin Brush, son of Henry N., was born in Brushton in 1838. 
and always made his home there. He had large property interests, and 
to the care of these applied most of his energies and time. Finely 
educated, possessing exceptional business abilities, genial, companion- 
able and public spirited, Mr. Brush enjoyed the respect of everybody, 
and was of great usefulness in the hamlet that was his home. He died 
April 19, 1898. 



720 Histoky of Franklin County 

George D. Bell, born at Weybridge, Vt., in 1818, located in -Malone- 
in 1830. He was a farmer, but spent his winters for a long time in 
teaching village and country schools. Singularly mild and even tem- 
pered, though firm on every question of principle, and always upright 
and just, he was popular and respected. He died April 1, 1897. 

S. E. Blood, born at Hebron, 1ST. H., June 4, 1822, came to Fort 
Covington in 1853, and entered the employ of William Hogle as a 
clerk, after which he engaged in the merchant tailoring business for a 
number of years. From 1863 to 1869 he was clerk in a hotel of Sam. 
Browning at Tadousac, Que., and in the latter year was appointed 
deputy collector of customs at Fort Covington. Of quiet manner, excel- 
lent judgment and forceful action, he was long a leading citizen of the 
place, and not the least important of the little group of possibly a half 
dozen men who for years practically controlled the action of the Bepub- 
lican party in the town. He died March 4, 1897. 

William Henry Barney, born at Eichmond, Vt., August 5, 1838. 
came to Bangor about twenty years later. His father was landlord of 
the hotel at North Bangor, and William had a share in its management. 
He enlisted as first lieutenant in the 98th regiment, and was promoted 
to a captaincy. Upon his return from the army he engaged in trade at 
North Bangor with Baker and Clinton Stevens, and afterward con- 
tinued the business with them in Malone. He was later in the photo- 
graphic business, and in insurance, and was postmaster. For a time 
he was captain of the old 27th Sep. Co., N. G. S. 1ST. Y., and in a 
number of political campaigns was first tenor in the famous Bepublican 
glee club of Malone. He went West in 1897, and for a number of years 
was a conductor on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Bailroad. He 
then lived a life of leisure at Albuquerque, New Mexico, until 1917, when 
he returned East. 

William D. Brennan, born at Gloucester, Ont., December 29, 1839, 
came to Malone in 1851, and- began life here as a water carrier for a 
gang of men who were completing work on the newly built railroad. 
Afterward he accepted employment of whatever sort he could get, 
always of a menial sort until his cheerful alacrity and quick intelligence 
had attracted attention, and brought him better opportunities. He 
worked his way through Franklin Academy, and was a student at 
Middlebury College when his patriotic impulses took him into the army. 



Biographical Sketches 721 

He was commissioned a lieutenant in the 1 I'M regiment, was pro- 
moted to a captaincy, and later was brevetted major. There wa 
braver man in the army. At the battle of Chapin's Farm in L864 he 
lost a leg. Upon the conclusion of his army service he became pro-. 
fessor of mathematics in the academy at Potsdam, and pursued the 
study of law while teaching. He was admitted to tbc bar in 1S66, and 
located at Malone — gaining an excellent rank at the bar, building up 
a large practice, and commanding the respect and confidence of his 
clients and of the community generally. Major Brennan was county 
treasurer for nine years from 1867, and in 1878 v. as elected to the 
Assembly, followed by two re-elections. He was a hard-working, con- 
scientious representative, and in his third term was chairman of the 
committee on ways and means, a distinction up to that time enjoyed by 
no other Franklin county member since Mr. Wheeler's incumbency of 
the same assignment thirty years before. At the time of this appoint- 
ment Mr. Wheeler was a candidate for United States Senator, with 
Major Brennan in charge of his canvass, while the Speaker was for Mr. 
Piatt, and desired an early caucus, which the friends of Mr. Wheeler 
generally felt was prejudicial to his interests. However, Major Brennan 
signed the call for the caucus, and was severely criticised therefor. 
This criticism manifestly weighed upon him, and, added to the fact 
that he had not been well for some months, broke him down. Melan- 
cholia developed, he had to relinquish his work at Albany early in 
February, and returned to Malone to recuperate. March 7, 1881, he 
started for a ride to and through Duane, and committed suicide by 
taking strychnia. Major Brennan held strong convictions on all ques- 
tions, and for a dozen years was one of the most effective and popular 
campaign speakers in the county, was always deeply interested in all 
matters affecting Malone and the county, and personally was esteemed 
by everybody. 

Charles A. Burke, born in Bombay January 21, 1843, worked on a 
farm and attended Fort Covington Academy in his youth, and then 
studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1868, he practiced in a small way 
at Hogansburgh and elsewhere in the northern part of the county for a 
couple of years — finally locating in Malone in 1870, in partnership 
with Henry G. Kilburn, and having continued to practice here ever 
since. At one time he also operated a planing mill and sash and door 
factory in company with John Kelley. Mr. Burke has always been a 
pronounced Democrat, and in younger years was one of the most active 



722 History of Franklin County 

and influential workers in that party. He was often chairman of the 
county committee, and during the first Cleveland administration was 
postmaster of Malone. 

Charles Webster Breed, born at Leominster, N. H., May 19, 1844, 
removed in his youth to Plattsburgh with his parents, and while enjoy- 
ing an outing at Chateaugay Lake engaged to enter a drug store at 
Chateaugay as clerk. When the 9Gth regiment Avas being organized at 
Plattsburgh in 1861 Mr. Breed joined it with a number of others whom 
he had helped to recruit at Chateaugay, and was commissioned a first 
lieutenant. Sickness compelled him to resign from the service, and, 
returning home, he located in Malone, where he has since continued to 
reside, and for the greater part of the time was conspicuous in the 
town's business and civic affairs. He was in the drug business for more 
than a generation, became as he gained means and standing a zealous 
advocate of the establishment of industrial works in the village, and 
for many years gave excellent service to the Republican party as a 
member of its county committee and as a campaign organizer. Mr. 
Breed had initiative in large measure as well as superior executive 
capacity, and his pride in Malone and interest in its welfare were 
intense. He was for years the foreman and leading spirit of one of the 
crack companies of the old volunteer fire department, which owed its 
excellence in large part to his efforts, and later served as the depart- 
ment's chief engineer. To Mr. Breed's planning and advocacy was 
chiefly due the reorganization of the department upon lines which still 
continue — with a semi-paid force, an electric fire alarm system, and 
horse service for hauling the apparatus. He was also one of the group 
of a half dozen earnest, public-spirited men who secured for the village 
a reorganized waterworks system, with Horse brook as its source of 
supply, and was the president of the new company for a dozen years or 
more. Mr. Breed had an active interest in our schools, and served on 
the board of education with efficiency. Since the purchase of the water- 
works by the village Mr. Breed has led a retired life, but without losing 
any of his interest for Malone's welfare and prosperity. 

William C. Breed, son of Charles W., was born in Malone June 24, 
1871. After graduation at Franklin Academy and iVmherst College, 
he began the study of law in New York, with Edward H. Hobbs, a 
former Malone man, and in 1898 opened an office in New York on his 
own account. His progress in the profession was marked from the 



Biographical Sketches 723 

beginning, and after a few years his rank was recognized as well 
toward the top of the younger practitioners. Latterly he has had great 
prominence as the legal representative of large trade and industrial 
interests, both in court procedure and in conference and negotiation 
with governmental departments at Washington and with Congressional 
committees concerning legislation and interpretation of anti-trust 
statutes. Mr. Breed is now recognized as one of the ablest and most 
valued of attorneys concerning these and similar policies, and his 
opinions always count strongly with the big men with whom he is in 
frequent association. Appointed chairman of the New York city com- 
mittee of one hundred to organize and prosecute the big May drive for 
the hundred million dollar Red Cross fund, Mr. Breed enlisted his 
workers, planned the methods to be employed, and supervised the cam- 
paign so efficiently that the subscriptions were carried to the amazing 
total of forty-two million dollars, or seventeen million dollars in excess 
of the city's quota. It was a grand piece of work, recognized as one of 
of the very best made anywhere in the country, and with the credit for 
success belonging more to Mr. Breed than to any other single man. 

Jay O. Ballard, born in Mexico, Oswego county, January 8, 1858, 
began business life in a store, and then became a traveling salesman for 
a time. He located in Malone in 1887, engaging with C. C. Whittelsey 
in the manufacture of clothing, but not successfully. In 1891, how- 
ever, he resumed the business in partnership with his brother-in-law, 
Colonel William C. Skinner, and has built up a very prosperous estab- 
lishment, erected a well equipped factory for the manufacture of cloths, 
employs more than a hundred hands, and turns out large quantities of 
garments of various kinds which find a ready sale. Mr. Ballard is 
actively and efficiently interested in most matters that touch the town 
and county's interests, and is liberal both with purse and time in tbeir 
support. Though without military education or experience, he was 
drafted at one time because of his sound business judgment and execu- 
tive ability to be the commandant of Company K, JN". G. S. N. Y., and 
made an excellent record. He is president of the Alice Hyde Hospital 
Association, and gives to the affairs of the institution much time and 
thoughtful effort. 

Lorenzo Coburn, born in Constable December 27, 1812, became 
principal of Franklin Academy, after which he had many wanderings 
and various occupations. He was a miller and merchant in a small way 



724 History of Feanklin County 

at Constable, and then engaged in market gardening — having been 
the first to supply residents of the village of Malone in a systematic 
way with berries and early vegetables. In his later years he lived in 
Kansas, New Jersey and South Dakota, and always the place of his 
latest location was the best and most promising in the world. For many 
years he sent letters regularly to the Palladium., and, regardless of 
the text, he invariably made them interesting. He died at Vermillion,. 
S. D., July 28, 1898. 

Amos G. Crooks, born in Malone January 9, 1827, gained business 
experience through employment by large interests in Vermont and in 
Pennsylvania between 1849 and 1869. He returned to Malone in the 
latter year, engaging here at first in the commission business, and then 
a? a dealer in stoves and tin. In 1879 he established a wholesale and 
retail grocery business, the former branch of which soon became so 
large and successful that the latter was abandoned. Admitting his 
sons to partnership, the concern took the name and style of A. G. Crooks 
& Co. It had a large and prosperous business until 1918, when it sold 
to the Northern New York Grocery Co. Mr. Crooks was of fine judg- 
ment, and undoubted probity. He died February 2, 1890. 

William P. Cantwell, born at Norton Creek, Canada, in L829, was 
graduated from the University of Vermont, studied law in Montreal, 
and in 1851 was admitted an attorney in that city, where he practiced 
and did newspaper work for two years, when be removed to Malone. 
His fine scholarship, studious habits and persistence in fighting his 
cases with great fertility of resource soon won for him a leading place 
at the Franklin county bar. He was in particular a master of all of 
the fine points and technicalities of procedure, and a skillful pleader. 
There was hardly a case of large importance during the period of his 
greatest activity in practice that he was not retained on one side or the 
other, and his zeal, assidu^ and resourcefulness always made him a 
force to be reckoned with. Because of failing eyesight he withdrew 
from active practice of the law in 1899. Mr. Cantwell was a Democrat, 
but of the Union stripe during the civil war. In 1858 he was elected 
school commissioner, and while Albon P. Man was absent in the army 
acted as district attorney in his stead. He was often the candidate of 
his party for public office — a number of times for school commissioner, 
for Congress in 1872 against Mr. Wheeler, and in 1877 for county 
judge. Though he always polled a good vote, the county was so strongly 



Biographical Sketches 725 

Eepublican after 1860 that he was always defeated, and never held 
office except that of school commissioner. Mr. Cantwell was earnestly 
interested in all public matters, both general and local, and often was 
active in participation in them, lie was a strong supporter of the 
public schools, was one of the founders and early trustees of the Northern 
New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes, and was identified with various 
business affairs outside of the lines of his profession. Daring the time 
that the owner of the Gazette was postmaster, before the civil war, Mr. 
Cantwell was in charge of the editorship of the paper. He died sud- 
denly at the breakfast table October 31, 1905. 

William F. Creed, born in Fort Covington in March, 18-47, came to 
Malone in 1873 to become a clerk and afterward teller in the National 
Bank of Malone. In 1877 he was appointed cashier of the Farmers 
National Bank, and so continued for over seven years. During the 
latter part of this period • he became active in Democratic county 
politics, and in 1884 was a Presidential Elector. A little later he was 
appointed auditor in the New York custom house under Daniel Magone, 
and afterward a State bank examiner and then deputy State super- 
intendent of banks. While serving in the latter capacity he was offered 
and accepted a lucrative position in a bank in Buffalo, but remained 
there only a short time — removing to New York city, where, with a 
desk in the brokerage office of Flower & Co., which put him in close 
touch with big operators, he became a speculator in Wall street at a 
time when prices were moving rapidly and wildly; and to-day Mr. 
Creed was rich, and to-morrow almost or quite poor. It was a feverish, 
wearing life, because it kept a man on edge both day and night, and 
not improbably the excitement and anxiety of it broke his health. He 
died while on a visit to Fort Covington November 9, 1903. 

James F. Carrigan, born at Windsor, Vt., in 1861, began his business 
life as a telegraph operator, and soon afterward became spare station 
agent, serving at various points on the Central Vermont, and every- 
where so acceptably as to command the attention and approval of the 
management. In 1892 he was assigned to Malone as trainmaster on the 
0. & L. division of the Rutland R. E., and has since been promoted to 
be assistant superintendent of the division. Efficient, attentive to his 
•duties and always courteous, Mr. Carrigan enjoys everybody's good will, 
and does his work thoroughly and well. 



726 History of Franklin County 

David Decatur Darius Dewey, born in Malone October ]4, 1826,. 
engaged for ten years in teaching after his graduation from the Albany 
Normal College in 1849, and was then for a time instructor of teachers' 
institutes in Wisconsin, where he followed also the business of sur- 
veying. Returning East, he located at Moira, and for many years was 
one of the most influential, useful and respected citizens of the town. 
He was railroad station agent, merchant, surveyor, and manufacturer of 
lumber and starch. Mr. Dewey served Moira repeatedly as supervisor, 
and was school commissioner for six years. He died October 15, 1906. 

William S. Douglas of Chateaugay was a farmer on an extensive 
scale, a manufacturer of potato starch and, with his son, Hiram A., 
proprietor of a large tannery. He died March 24, 1887, aged 71 years. 

Calvin S. Douglass, who had been prominent in Chateaugay as a 
merchant and miller, died in September, 1887, aged 70 years. 

William G. Dickinson was born in Bangor, and in 1846 became a 
partner with his father, Joshua, and brother, Welis S., in the mer- 
cantile business. A few years later he established a store himself in 
Malone, and during the civil war and for a year or two afterward was 
easily the leading merchant of the place, at least as regards the finer 
class of dry goods. In 1867 he sold the business, and, forming a 'partner- 
ship with a brother-in-law, engaged in the wholesale grocery business in 
New York city. The venture not proving altogether successful, it was 
closed out after three years, and Mr. Dickinson located at Duluth, Minn., 
where he represented a railway company for a year or two, and then 
removed to Kansas to take charge of the land interests of the Atchison. 
Topeka & Santa Fe R. E. for a number of years, and is credited with 
having founded more than a hundred towns in the State. From 
Kansas he went to National City, Calif., to manage a big land develop- 
ment scheme, including the construction of a waterworks and an irriga- 
tion system. No more genial, enterprising, popular or straightforward 
man ever lived in Franklin county. He was county treasurer here from 
3 861 to 1867. He died at National City July 14, 1891. 

Wells S. Dickinson, also a son of Joshua, was born in Bangor 
August 16, 1828, and at the age of eighteen years became a partner 
with his father in the mercantile business and also in the manufacture 
of potato starch. The latter interest soon commanded more of his 
attention than any other, and at one time he was the owner, in whole 



Biographical Sketches 727 

or in part, of no less than eight starch mills in Franklin and St. Law- 
rence counties, besides being the principal dealer in the commodity in 
this section of the State. He served the town of Bangor as supervisor 
for a number of terms, was elected to the Assembly in 1859, and to the 
State Senate in 1871 and again in 1873. Next to William A. Wheeler, 
whose chief political lieutenant he was, he had more influence and 
evinced more interest in politics than any other Eepublican in the 
county. He was three times a delegate to national conventions, and it 
was principally through his efforts and enthusiasm that the nomination 
for Vice-President came to Mr. Wheeler in 1876. Later he was the repre- 
sentative of the Northern Pacific B. E. for a number of years in market- 
ing its lands and building towns in Dakota, and then at Washington 
to guard against strike legislation in Congress. He was a man of tire- 
less energy, keen, honest and capable in business, and any candidate 
for a Eepublican nomination in Franklin county who was fortunate 
enough to enlist his support was almost always sure of winning. He 
died in Malone January 19, 1892. 

Edwin E. Dickinson, son of Wells S., was born in Bangor August 
31, 1852, and after graduating from the University of Vermont joined 
with his father in the mercantile business, and then studied law at 
Malone. In 1877 he was appointed private secretary to Vice-President 
Wheeler, and made his home with him at Washington and Malone for 
four years. He was chairman of the Franklin county Eepublican com- 
mittee in 1880, and made one of the finest campaigns ever known here. 
Locating in New York city in 1887, he became interested after a year 
or two in the Boynton Furnace Co., of which his father-in-law was the 
founder and head. After Mr. Boynton's death, Mr. Dickinson became 
president and treasurer of the company, and continues with it in that 
capacity. The concern has a branch in Chicago, and does a large and 
prosperous business. Mr. Dickinson evinces all of the family character- 
istics of energy, enterprise, public spirit, spotless character, and engag- 
ing personality. No one is a more agreeable and charming companion 
and friend. 

Charles Durkee, born in Burke, January 9, 1827, was at an early 
age manager of the branch store of E. L. Meigs at Brushton, and shortly 
afterward was appointed postmaster at Malone, in which place he had 
become a partner of Eufus B. Stephens in the drug business. Later he 
engaged in general merchandising in Malone with Sidney W. Gilleft. 



728 History of Franklin County 

At the outbreak of the civil war he was colonel of a State militia regi- 
ment, and endeavored to have his command join the Union army as a 
body — the only Democrat, I think, in this section of the State who 
was prominent in the old militia organization who took such a stand, 
or, indeed, manifested any real anxiety for Union army service, though 
of course there were hundreds of Democrats not so connected with the 
militia who sprang to arms as individuals. Failing to rally his regiment 
of militia for enlistment as a unit, Mr. Durkee joined in the autumn of 
1861 in recruiting the 98th regiment of volunteers, which originally 
was expected to be composed exclusively of Franklin county men, but 
which, in fact, finally comprised seven companies from this locality and 
three from Wayne county. Mr. Durkee was commissioned as its lieu- 
tenant-colonel, and served with it in that rank and also as its colonel 
for about a year, when he resigned. Eeturning to M alone, he engaged 
again in the mercantile business, but with unfortunate results. During 
the last three or four years of his life Colonel Durkee was without fixed 
occupation except that he held various appointments in the State canal 
and prison departments. He was jovial, fond of companionship, and 
personally popular and esteemed. He died January 7, 1879. 

Ira A. Darling, born at Morristown, Yt., March 7, 1828, studied 
medicine, and located for praotice at Brush ton in 1851 — from which 
date he was a good deal of a " rolling stone " for nearly twenty years, 
having practiced between times in Chicago, West Virginia, Nicholville, 
Malone and Dickinson. In 1869 or 1870 he located at West Bangor, 
and, besides giving attention to the work of his profession, engaged in 
a number of commercial enterprises, and became active as a local 
Republican worker. He died October 4, 1891. 

George W. Dustin, ist, born in Dickinson in 1837, was a soldier 
during the civil war, and was connected afterward with the regular army 
for several years, in the quartermaster's department in the West. There- 
after he was variously occupied in Franklin county, and in 1887 was 
elected sheriff. Upon the expiration of his term of office he engaged in 
the drug business at Brushton. He was prominent as a Mason and Odd 
Fellow and also in Grand Army circles. Of imposing presence, and a 
genial companion, he had probably the largest acquaintance of any man 
in the county. He died July 15, 1897. 

George W. Dustin, 2d, was born in Dickinson January 25, 18-18, 
and began life for himself as a farmer, and then as a merchant at Dick- 



Biographical Sketches J 729 

inson Center. Clean, manly, genial and accommodating, he early gained 
the. regard and confidence of his townsmen, and was chosen supervisor. 
Becoming interested in politics, and Dickinson having a strong claim 
to Republican party recognition, Mr. Dustin won the nomination for 
county clerk after a hard fight in 1879, and of course was elected and 
re-elected. In 1886 he entered the employ of A. B. Parmelee & Son, 
and while with them was appointed a deputy collector of customs at 
Malone. In 1892 he removed to Baltimore to take the agency with 
Capt. H. B. Meigs of the Aetna Life Ins. Co. for the State of Mary- 
land, hut four years later sold his interest in the business to return 
to Malone and re-engage in the management of the A. B. Parmelee & 
Son land and timber business. Since the death of Morton S. Parmelee 
in 1897 Mr. Dustin has been in sole charge of the properties and affairs 
of the establishment, and has built up in connection with it an important 
and successful real estate business of his own. In addition, he never 
fails to evince a strong and useful interest in local matters and enter- 
prises, and has held with credit to himself and benefit to various inter- 
ests many places of trust in the town. He was for one term a member 
of the local board of managers of the St. Lawrence Hospital for the 
Insane at Ogdensburg. 

Chandler Ellsworth was born in Port Covington in 1807, and was 
a lifelong resident of the town. He owned a farm of six hundred acres, 
and his buildings were said to be the best farm buildings in the county. 
Of upright life and possessed of sagacious judgment, he commanded gen- 
eral confidence and accumulated a fine property. He held many town 
offices, including the supervisorship, and was at times the candidate of 
the Democratic party for county positions. He died November 22, 1888. 

Pew men of the civil war period were better known in Malone than 
Lucius D. Ellsworth, shoemaker, who was also a teacher of singing 
schools, and himself a vocalist of more than ordinary merit. In church 
choirs, at concerts by home talent and at social gatherings he was always 
ready to lift up his voice in glorious song, and his two most popular 
selections were " Had I But Ten Thousand a Year " and " The Sword 
of Bunker Hill." Mr. Pllsworth went to the war as a captain in the 
98th regiment, returned to Malone upon the expiration of his term of 
service, and in 1867 removed to Illinois, where he died July 4, 1900, 
aged eighty-two years. The place of his birth and the date of his 
locating in Malone are unknown to the writer. 



730 Histoky of Franklin County 

Isaac B. Farrar, born at Fairfax, Vt., August 10, 1802, came to 
Malone in 1839, and removed to Burke a few years later, where he con- 
tinued to reside until 188-1, when he retired from his life-long work as 
a farmer, and returned to Malone to pass his remaining years. Mr. 
Farrar was of upright life and ardent convictions — an abolitionist 
before the war, and so intensely patriotic that he enlisted in the Union 
army when he had passed the age of sixty years. Careful and prudent, 
he accumulated property to the amount of perhaps fifteen thousand dol- 
lars, and with the exception of legacies of five hundred dollars each to 
churches in Burke and Bellmont and in Malone, and a few personal 
remembrances, bequeathed it all as a trust fund to establish and endow 
the Farrar Home in Malone for Deserving Old Ladies. He died 
December 16, 1899. 

Francis D. Flanders was born in Salisbury, N. H., in 1810, and came 
to Fort Covington with his parents about 1825 or 1826. While still in 
his youth he became associated with Samuel Hoard in the publication 
of the Franklin Republican, and was afterward with him in Ogdens- 
burg in the managament and editorship of the St. Lawrence Republican. 
Returning to Fort Covington, he established the Franklin Gazette in 
1837, which he continued to own and edit until 1876, when he sold the 
business, though continuing as editor for some years afterward. In his 
younger years his editorial work was thoughtful and strongs and the 
paper was recognized as one of the ablest of Democratic country weeklies 
in the State. In Mr. Flanders's later years, however, he seemed to lose 
the inclination for extended editorial discussion, and to prefer inditing 
only pungent, stinging paragraphs, and selecting extracts from other 
papers in expression of his views, which were always extreme and 
radical. While published at Fort Covington the Gazette was outspoken 
in sympathy with the Canadian rebellion or Papineau cause, and was 
forbidden circulation in the Canadian mails. The office of publication 
was removed to Malone in 1847, and during the civil war the paper 
was so pronounced in upholding the constitutionality of secession and 
so bitter in denunciation of the Lincoln administration that Mr. Flan- 
ders was arrested and confined in Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren for 
about two months, and for nearly two years the Gazette was denied 
postal privileges in the United States. Mr. Flanders was member of the 
Assembly in 1844, county clerk 1853-6, postmaster of Malone during 
the Buchanan administration, and Presidential elector in 1868. He was 
for many years a member of the board of education of the village school 
district of Malone, and for a time its president. He died in Malone 
January 26, 1881. 



Biographical. Sketches 731 

Joseph R. Flanders, a brother of Francis D., was born at Salisbury, 
N. H., in 1814. His home was in Fort Covington from about 1825 
until 1847, when he removed to Malone. He was admitted to the bar 
at an early age, and in his spare hours did a good deal of writing for the 
Gazette, in which his articles usually appeared as editorials. He was 
scholarly, a finished and forceful writer, and especially delighted in dis- 
cussion of constitutional principles. He was a delegate to the conven- 
tion of 1846 to revise the State constitution, was member of Assembly 
in 1847, and the same year was elected county judge. In the factional 
strife which divided the Democratic party in 1848 and for a few years 
thereafter, he and Francis D. disagreed, and Joseph R. established in 
1853 and for two years edited the Jaffersonian at Malone to urge his 
opinions and to represent the uncompromising or hunker wing of 
Democracy. It goes without saying that the Jeffersonian was exception- 
ally able and vigorous in its utterances, but it was discontinued when 
Mr. Flanders removed to New York city in 1885 to re-engage in the 
practice of the law, of which profession he was a notably strong and 
reputable exponent. He also was confined at Fort Lafayette and Fort 
Warren for a few weeks during the civil war. He returned to Malone 
in 1864 to become counsel for the 0. & L. C. B. B. Co., but soon after- 
ward went to La Crosse, Wis., to engage in editorial work on " Brick " 
Pomeroy's once famous and widely circulated Democrat. In 1868 he 
located again in New York city, where he continued in the practice of 
the law until his health failed in 1886. Mr. Flanders was one of the 
strongest men intellectually that ever lived in Franklin county, a force- 
ful and captivating speaker, a man of intense and uncompromising con- 
victions, and of high character. He died at Eichmond Hill, Long 
Island, November 5, 1886. There is a legend in the family that during 
■a war, centuries ago, between England and Flanders (now a part of 
Belgium) soldiers from Salisbury, England, picked up a baby boy on a 
battle field, and, unable to find his parents or to learn anything about 
him. took him home with them, and named him Flanders from the fact 
that he was found there. This boy is said to have been the ancestor of 
all the Flanders in England and the United States. 

Edward Fitch was born in Plattsburgh in 1820, and removed to 
Malone in his young manhood. He was admitted to the bar about 1850, 
and practiced with his brother-in-law, Ashbel B. Parmelee, until 1858, 
when he removed to New York city to become the law partner of 
ex-Governor Myron H. Clark, with whom he had formed intimate 



732 History of Franklin County 

relations while the latter was Governor and Mr. Fitch member of Assem- 
bly. Mr. Fitch was elected to the Assembly in 1854 by a combination 
of Whigs, Knownothings and temperance forces. He died in New York 
in 1887. 

Ashbel P. Fitch, son of Edward, was born in Malone in 1848, and 
removed with his father to New York in 1858. He was educated in the 
schools of New York city and in Germany, becoming almost as much 
a German in habits, language and associations as he was an American, 
though too earnestly and loyally imbued with American principles ever 
to have been in sympathy with imperialistic ideas and practices. Upon 
his return to New York he studied law, and practiced for several years. 
He was elected to Congress as a Eepublican by a large majority in 
1886, and having become a Democrat on the tariff and excise questions 
was elected again and again as a Democrat by even larger majorities in 
the same district. He afterward served for two terms as comptroller of 
the city of New York, and about 1899 became president of the Trust 
Company of America, which at the time had the largest capital and 
surplus of any like institution in the world. Mr. Fitch was one of the 
most genial of men, possessed large abilities, and had a multitude of 
friends. He died suddenly May 3, 1904. 

Alexander R. Flanagan, born at Waddington July 6, 1823,' began his 
business life in railroad emplojonent, but engaged soon afterward in the- 
hotel business at Eouses Point. In 1857 he purchased the Miller House- 
in Malone, and, until he leased the Ferguson House, continued as its 
manager. In 1881 he gave over the care of the business to his sons, 
although always himself recognized as the real head of the house. He 
was a natural landlord, and no hotel man in the State was better known 
or more cordially liked by his guests and townsmen. He died July 30,. 
1894. 

Moses W. Field, son of William, who lived in the Broughton neigh- 
borhood in Malone, and then in Bangor, was born at Watertown, and 
located at Detroit, Mich., at an early age. He accumulated a fortune- 
estimated at half a million dollars, and was elected to Congress in 1872 
as a Eepublican. Later he became a Greenbacker, and had more than 
any other one man to do with the nomination of Peter Cooper for the- 
Presidency. He died at Detroit March 14, 1889. 



Biographical Sketches 733 

J. Dennison Fisk, the time and place of whose birth I do not know, 
was a conspicuous figure in Franklin county sixty or seventy years ago. 
He was in trade here at various places, published a newspaper for a 
short time at Fort Covington, and was the first telegraph operator at 
Maloue. He finally made advantageous business connections in New- 
York city, and was in the wholesale boot and shoe trade there for years. 
Fun-loving, companionable and versatile, he had a host of friends in 
this north country, which he visited frequently. He died at Hartford, 
Conn., January 4, 1899. 

Christopher R. Fay, born in Comity Antrim, Ireland, February 17, 
1838, came to Canada with his parents as a boy, and then to Fort Cov- 
ington about 1852. As a }~outh he learned the trade of boot and shoe- 
maker, but never found the work attractive or satisfying. All of his 
inclinations were to art, and before long he began to do portrait work — 
obtaining his paints and oils at a carriage paint shop. Even with such 
crude material he managed occasionally to turn out a piece of work that 
brought him a bit of money upon which to live. Then he took to the 
camera, and made the old-style tintypes and daguerreotypes of sixty 
years ago — apropos of which I recall that he used to insist that T. B. 
Cushman of Malone, a maker of matches in his final years, and once a 
local preacher, was undoubtedly the inventor of the tintype. Mr. Fay 
came to Malone shortly before the outbreak of the civil war, and made 
pictures with Seymour E. Buttolph. During the war he and Mr. 
Buttolph were with the army of the Potomac for most of the time, 
engaged in the same work and in photography. He returned to Malone, 
which he continued to make his home, except for a short time that he 
followed his profession in Syracuse. He was in partnership here at 
various times with Charles Ferris, Captain William H. Barney, George 
Farmer, M. C. Goodell, and perhaps others. He had a fine artistic 
sense, and for years his work was the best produced by any gallery in 
Northern New York. His crayon portraits in particular were of the 
best, and brought him much outside business as well as alluring offers 
to attach himself to city establishments. He died July 25, 1916. 

Lyman J. Folsom, born in Bombay in 1836, located at Trout Fiver 
in 1853, and a few years later engaged in merchandising there in com- 
pany with his father-in-law, Augustus Martin. The business did not 
prosper, and the firm had to make an assignment during the civil war. 
Afterward Mr. Folsom opened a store of his own, and did an immense 



734 History of Franklin County 

business both in merchandising and in speculating in livestock and farm 
products ; but misfortune again overtook him, and he again assigned. In 
1876 he removed to Malone, where he conducted a livery business, and 
was elected sheriff in 1878 and again in 1884, carrying Malone by nearly 
a thousand majority, and the county by correspondingly large figures. 
Owing to his liberality to the poor, and to losses sustained in business, 
he became involved again financially in 1887, and, as though even then 
foreseeing the end, declared a year or two previously to friends that he 
would prefer to die rather than again go through bankruptcy. In 
March, 1887, after settling every account that he had with Malone 
creditors, he drove one day to Trout Eiver, and there committed suicide. 
No man in the county was better liked. 

Henry Furness, born at Bay St. Louis, Miss., February 24, 1850, 
came to Malone as a child with his mother after the death of his father, 
and after his school days here clerked in the drug store of Heath & 
Breed. He then connected himself with the Alabama State Hospital 
for the Insane for two or three years, and next studied medicine in New 
York city. His first field of practice was Windsor, Vt., where he 
remained until 1880, when he located at Malone, where he made a 
brilliant record in the profession, which interested him absorbingly and in 
the practice of which he was continually employing then novel, and 
perhaps startling, expedients, but which because of his marvelous suc- 
cesses became standard. He won and held a standing as a physician 
second to none in Northern New York. Dr. Furness inherited from a 
relative in California a comfortable fortune, and in his will, after numer- 
ous bequests to relatives and friends, gave $5,000 each to the Alice Hyde 
Memorial Hospital Association for the support of free beds for the poor, 
the Farrar Home for Deserving Old Ladies in Malone, the Home for 
the Friendless in Plattsburgh, and to Franklin Academy for scholar- 
ships ; $6,000 to St. Mark's Church, Malone, for the relief of the poor ; 
and $2,000 each to the board of education of the village of Malone and 
to the Wadhams Beading Circle for the purchase of books. These are 
all trust funds, the income from which is alone to be used for the pur- 
poses stated. Dr. Furness died after a long illness July 5, 1913. 

Daniel Gorton, born at Pomfret, Vt., April 5, 1790, came to Malone 
in 1820, where he established a paper mill on the west side of the river 
at about where Earle's axe factory and then Ladd & Smallman's planing 
mill used to be. All paper was then made by hand, and it was Mr. 



Biographical Sketches 735 

Gorton's custom to manufacture a quantity and peddle it himself through 
the country. When the time came that he was able to employ two girls 
in the mill he felt that the business had prospered greatly. Mr. Grortorj 
was of superior abilities, and was a born agitator and reformer. He 
organized here the first temperance society ever formed in Northern 
New York, and though he was criticized and opposed by the clergy as 
undertaking to interfere with personal liberty persisted in his work of 
lecturing in advocacy of teetotalism and prohibition. He became also 
an anti-Mason, and after his removal from Malone to Lowell, Mass., 
which occurred in 1831, he was enlisted in the anti-slavery crusade as 
an ardent abolitionist, and was the close friend of William Lloyd 
Garrison and his coadjutor in the cause. Mr. Gorton died at Lowell in 
1875. 

Theodore Gay, the last survivor but one of the early physicians of 
Malone, was born in Bridport, Vt, April 1, 1812, the son of a physician, 
and the cost of his education, which included the course at Middlebury 
College, was the whole of his patrimony. After graduation at college, 
he taught school in Western New York and in Georgia to obtain means 
for pursuing his medical studies. Receiving his degree, he established 
himself in 1840 at Westville, and finding it a rather barren field moved 
after a short time to Fort Covington. But there the practice was prac- 
tically monopolized by Dr. Roswell Bates, so that there was no business 
for a young doctor, and in 1842 he came to Malone. The physicians of 
that time filled a niche in the life of a community that can scarcely be 
comprehended to-day. They not only ministered to the physical ills, 
but were the intimate friends, the mentors and the monitors of their 
patients, and so interwove their lives with these that they contributed 
in a large measure to the moulding of character. Of all the doctors of 
that period in Malone — and as a class they made the place famous as 
a center of medical skill — Dr. Gay had the profoundest mind, and the 
least regard for matters outside of his profession. Gentle as a woman, 
refined in thought and expression, radiating sunshine in the sick room, 
he practiced as if it all were a labor of love, with no element of material 
recompense entering into it. Indeed, he was wont himself to say in entire 
sincerity that if he could afford it he would never make any charge at 
all for his services; and the charges that he did make were grotesquely 
insignificant — a half a dollar per visit within the village limits, except 
that for a Sunday call the fee was a dollar; from one to two shillings 
for office advice and treatment; and for a trip into the country as far 



736 History of Franklin County 

as Bellmont, in storra of rain or sleet or in zero weather, from a dollar 
to a dollar and a half. And these fees included medicines, and, more 
often than not, were paid in orders on a merchant or in produce — 
stockings at a dollar a pair, butter at ten cents a pound, veal at two and 
a half cents a pound, chickens at a shilling apiece, etc. In 1880 Dr. 
Gay virtually gave up his general practice in order to devote himself 
almost continuously to the care of Vice-President Wheeler, receiving 
next to nothing for his services while Mr. Wheeler lived, and only a 
thousand dollars by the latter s will for six or seven years of attention. 
The doctor had at first no feeling of resentment, but only grief that he 
had been so hardly treated. As time passed, however, and friends sym- 
pathized with him and expressed indignation, he became as bitter as his 
kindly nature would permit, and filed a claim against the estate, which 
was eventually paid at ten thousand dollars. Dr. Gay loved books, both 
the text books of his profession and the best literature, and he had a 
wonderfully retentive memory. One afternoon he called at my office, and, 
picking up a book of quotations, read from it here and there, from 
Byron, Shakespeare and others, a couplet or fragment of a stanza, con- 
tinuing from memory to repeat verse after verse until they joined to 
the next printed quotation. Dr. Gay died January 20, 1899. 

William W. Gay, born in Malone in January, 1851, studied law 
and was admitted to the bar after graduation from Franklin ' Academy 
and Middlebury College, but, finding the practice distasteful, turned his 
attention to journalism about 1881, in which his success has been pro- 
nounced. His first connection was with the Springfield (Mass.) Repub- 
lican, and he has since been on various Chicago and New York city 
dailies — at times as a special correspondent where assignments were 
important and service required discretion and judgment, but usually in 
the home office, where he has filled nearly every responsible position, 
including general and political editorial work. Of retentive memory, 
broadly read, indefatigable in application, and strong and brilliant as 
a writer, Mr. Gay has emphatically " made good." He has been on the 
New York World for several years past. 

Sidney W. Gillett, born at Essex, Vt., February 21, 1816, came to 
Franklin county in 1835, and had his home at various times in Chateau- 
gay, Constable, Malone and Montreal. He began clerking for Meigs & 
Wead in 1837, and two years later opened a store of his own at Trout 
River Lines, and a few vears afterward at Constable Corners. He dealt 



Biographical Sketches 737 

in practically everything that home customers wanted or that was dispos- 
able in the Montreal market or to the contractors who were then build- 
ing the Beauharnois canal — including Lumber, horses, nearly all kinds 
of other livestock, pot and pearl ashes, and farm produce. After closing 
out his mercantile business in Constable, he was in Montreal for a year, 
dealing in lumber, and removed to Malone in 1854, where he was in 
partnership in merchandising with Colonel Charles Durkee for several 
years, and afterward continued the store alone, dealt largely in real 
estate, erected a number of houses, became a bop grower, and for a 
time ran a tannery in Burke. At the time of locating in Malone he had 
accumulated a comfortable competence. About 1871 he bought an 
interest in the Owls Head iron mine, and in the work of developing it 
sunk a considerable part of his fortune. Mr. Gillett had the trading 
faculty in a remarkable degree, and used it with a keen shrewdness and 
sagacious judgment — continuing such operations in a small way years 
after he had practically retired from active business pursuits. Though 
not conspicuously active in public affairs, he had a thorough interest in 
them, and quietly was an earnest supporter of projects for the general 
welfare. He died June 24, 1902. 

Daniel D. Gorham was born in "Rutland, Vt., September 8, 1819, 
and was principal of Franklin Academy for a number of years in the 
fifties. He then taught at Montpelier, Vt., for eleven years, and after- 
ward at Northampton, Mass., where he died. October 26, 1891. 

William Gillis was born at Cornwall, Ont., June 22, 1822, and passed 
his youth at Dundee. He was admitted to the practice of medicine in 
1849, and practiced at Fort Covington from that date until his final 
illness in 1894. Dr. Gillis interested himself in politics at an early date, 
and became one of the most conspicuous and influential Republicans in 
the northern part of the county. Positive and rather aggressive, he 
naturally aroused antagonisms, and was the leader in some of the bit- 
terest town contests for party control that were ever fought in the 
county, though toward the close of his life all of this feeling died out, 
and by common consent he was recognized as leader. He filled many 
town offices with profit to the people and credit to himself, and was also 
school commissioner for two terms in the second commissioner district. 
He died February 17, 1894. 

George G. Gurley, born in Hopkiuton August 19, 1825, located at 
Chateaugay in 1851, where for several years he was station agent, then 
24 



738 History or Franklin County 

deputy collector of customs, and also a dealer in produce and lumber. 
He was elected sheriff as a Republican in 1863, and after the expiration 
of his term made his home in Malone, engaging in the tin and stove 
business, and afterward in dvj goods with D. F. Seper and E. R. Hott. 
He was elected supervisor in 1886, and continued to hold the office until 
his death. It was said of him that he was always " helping some one 
every day of his life," and when he died thousands of dollars in worth- 
less notes were found among his papers. As the key to understanding 
of his big heart and character it needs only to add that these in no 
way impeached his sagacity, but merely confirmed the quoted estimate 
of him. In temperament he was remarkably self-poised, and his judg- 
ment of the best. He died March 20, 1891. 

Samuel Greeno, born in Malone December 31, 1831, was the son of 
Samuel, who became a merchant here in 1821, and continued in trade 
with hardly a break, though in many different lines and at different 
stands, for almost sixty years — making his trips to market in the early 
times on horseback. The son became a clerk in his boyhood with Meigs 
& Wead, and from that time to the date in 1866 when he entered upon 
business for himself was behind the counter for many other merchants. 
Mr. Greeno and Henry B. Austin established the first distinctively 
ladies' store the town ever had. The firm was notably enterprising and 
accommodating, was widely known, and did a large business. Mr. 
Greeno was public spirited and popular. He died February 13, 1896. 

John Ingersoll Gilbert, born at Pittsford, Vt., October 11, 1837, 
came to Malone in 1861 to become principal of Franklin Academy, in 
which position he served for six years with great acceptability to the 
trustees of the institution and with marked satisfaction and incalculable 
benefit to his pupils. I question if there was ever one of the latter who 
in mature years could recall any teacher who had helped him as much 
as Mr. Gilbert, or for whom a greater admiration and a profounder 
respect abided. Naturally impetuous and quick to wrath, he yet had 
an infinity of patience with even the dullest student who was trying 
honestly to do his duty and master his work. He was thorough, and 
invested his work in the class room with an interest and charm that 
evoked the earnest attention of pupils and went far to develop their 
minds. Upon the conclusion of his service as principal of the academy, 
Mr. Gilbert opened a law office in Malone, and continued actively in 
practice until his death. By temperament and habit of thought he was 



Biographical Sketches 739 

far better adapted to appeals work than to the trial of cases, for he was 
inclined to insistence upon reaching the crux of a question as directly 
as possible, and it irked him to be under compulsion to give attention to 
the technicalities of procedure. The merits of a case outweighed every- 
thing else, and the mere rules of practice seemed non-essentials. Had 
he had connections which would have made his work mainly a study 
of principles and of argument before the higher tribunals his abilities 
must have assured him a rank with the foremost members of the bar. 
Intensely interested in public policies and problems of government. Air. 
Gilbert was as positive a partisan as there was in the State, and for 
thirty years or more was "on the stump" in every important campaign 
for the Republican cause. Of profound scholarship, as a speaker he 
measured his words with marvelous accuracy and with the finest shades 
of meaning, and, though he never reduced more than two or three 
addresses to writing, every speech that he made was of a finish and 
dovetailing that gave occasion for no revision for publication. Wnen 
indignant over a wrong or a sham every syllable cut like a rapier, and 
his emphasis of " infamous," « damnable " and other like characterizing 
words gave each its full and penetrating significance. Mr. Gilbert had 
neither taste nor aptitude for political management, and all of the 
recognition that he ever had in a public way came to him solely because 
of his intellectuality and belief in his moral fibre. He served three terms 
in the Assembly and one in the Senate, was a delegate at large to the 
Republican national convention in 1884, was defeated as a candidate 
for secretary of State in 1891, and was a member of the constitutional 
convention of 1894. He served also for a number of years as a member 
of the board of education of the village school district of Malone, and 
for a long time was president of the board of trustees of the Northern 
New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes. In the Legislature Mr. Gilbert 
was a man of mark and force from the first, and always stood squarely 
and immovably for measures that promised good to the State. He died 
December 19, 1904. 

Hiram Horton, born in Brandon, Vt., in April, 1799, came to 
Malone with his father, who also was called Hiram, and who located 
here between 1806 and 1808, and by 1811 had acquired lands which 
now comprise nearly all of that part of the village lying east of the 
river and south of Main street, and also a considerable tract on the 
west side of the river east of Duane street, together with a number of 
lots in the vicinity of the Rutland Railroad passenger station. The 



740 History or Franklin County 

properties included a grist mill and most of the water power privileges 
within the village limits. These lands were then all forest covered, and 
thus the subject of this sketch witnessed their transformation from a 
wilderness, first, into fruitful fields, and then gradually into a thriving 
village. The properties all came into the possession of Mr. Horton by 
inheritance and purchase, and in disposing of lots to individuals he 
was apt not to convey quite all that he believed to be covered by his own 
titles — not infrequently assuming to dictate years afterward to his 
grantees that they must not occupy or build upon certain lands which 
they supposed themselves to own, claiming that the forbidden occu- 
pancy would be an encroachment upon himself or upon a highway. He 
was exacting and autocratic in such matters, and also in regard to his 
water power rights, concerning which latter he had protracted and 
bitterly fought procedure in the courts. From an early age Mr. Horton 
was a principal factor in all town and village concerns. He built carding 
and fulling mills, and the original McMillan woolen factory, ran a 
saw mill, and operated the principal flouring mill in the town for over 
half a century; was among the earliest and most zealous of the agitators 
for the building of the old Northern Railroad; accepted an election to 
the Assembly in 1844 solely in order to procure a charter for the pro- 
posed company, which predecessors in that body had labored unsuccess- 
fully for years to obtain, and after accomplishing that work wrought 
untiringly for a long time to enlist capital in the work; indorsed the 
company's paper when its funds were exhausted to the amount of half 
a million dollars ; and with S. C. Wead and John L. Russell contracted 
with the company in 1847 to donate to it ten acres of land upon its 
agreement to locate its construction and repair shops in Malone — thus 
bringing to the place an industry which has been of incalculable benefit 
for sixty years now, and the establishment of which in Malone both 
Ogdensburg and Rouses Point resented with venomous bitterness. Of 
marked character, active temperament and inflexible purpose, Mr; 
Horton was not always easy of approach, nor gentle in manner, but 
those who knew him best found him generous and kind at heart, and 
everybody recognized him as public spirited and eminently useful in 
the community. Besides his service in the Assembly, Mr. Horton was 
often supervisor, and in 1864 was a Presidential elector, casting his 
vote for the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. He continued actively in 
business almost to the time of his death, which occurred August 31. 
1872. 



Biographical Sketches 741 

John Hutten, born in Glasgow, Scotland, in September, 1809, emi- 
grated to Canada with his parents in 1821. He graduated from the 
University of Vermont, in which institution he was afterward an 
instructor, and then located at Malone, and studied law with Asa 
Haseall. He was one of the engineers of the survey of the old Northern 
B. E. As a lawyer he was the partner of Joseph H. Jackson, YYm. P. 
Cantwell and Frederic F. Wead. In politics he was first a Whig and then 
a Democrat. He was elected county judge in 1851. His abilities were of 
a high order, and he commanded wide respect. He died April 1, 1862. 

George H. Hutten, brother of John, was born in Scotland, but 
passed most of his life in Malone. He was a painter by trade. OF the 
strongest and most radical convictions, he was an early temperance 
advocate, an extreme abolitionist, and in his later years a political pro- 
hibitionist. No man in the community was a more ardent Unionist 
during the civil war, and he showed his faith and patriotism by enlisting 
as a volunteer at the age of 51 years. He died suddenly March 24, 1889. 

Hiram Harwood, the father of Dr. Watson H., was born in Eden, 
Vt., but came to Bangor in childhood, and became one of the sub- 
stantial farmers and respected citizens of the town. He died December 
22, 1890. 

Daniel N. Huntington, born at Eochester, Vt., in 1815, came to 
Malone about 1840 to clerk for William King. A few years later he 
removed to Chateaugay, where he engaged in the mercantile business 
for himself for a time, and then returned to Malone to become a partner 
with C. C. Whittelsey in the foundry business. He was also interested 
in farming, and at one period was about as extensive a buyer and seller 
of Malone village real estate as any man in the town. He was super- 
visor of Malone for two years, and at one time was the principal 
practicing justice of the peace. He was also for many years the leading 
insurance agent in the county. He died November 18, 1892. 

Francis T. Heath, born in Malone, May 18, 1817, entered the 
Palladium office as an apprentice in 1835. and was deputy county clerk- 
under Uriah D. Meeker, during which latter service he began the study 
of law, but was compelled by ill health and imperative engagements 
along other lines to relinquish his intention to become a lawyer. He 
returned to a connection with the Palladium, became the editor and 



742 History of Franklin County 

proprietor of the paper, and continued his connection with it more or 
less actively until 1856, though in 18-14 he engaged also in the grocery 
and drug business. The grocery line was soon discontinued, however, 
and in 1876 Mr. Heath retired altogether from active business pur- 
suits — living thereafter a life of leisure. In 1853 he consented 
reluctantly to become the Whig candidate for member of Assembly, and 
was defeated by only a few votes, while the rest of the ticket was buried 
under three to four hundred majority. His interest and quiet participa- 
tion in public affairs always continued eager and useful, but with per- 
sistent refusal except in 1853 and upon one occasion that he served as 
village president to be a candidate for any office. Mr. Heath was a 
loyal friend and Christian gentleman, of private life that was spotless 
and pure, and of good sense and discriminating judgment. He was 
widely known locally and everywhere respected. He died suddenly of 
a paralytic shock January 7, 1886. 

Albert Hobbs, one of the ablest and most exemplary citizens that 
the county ever had, was born at Ogdensburg in August, 1820, and 
came to Constable with his father as a boy. His early purpose was to 
become a physician, and for a time he studied medicine with Dr. Dana 
Stevens of Moira; his inclination turning later to the law, he located 
in Malone, where he remained until his death. He was elected to the 
Assembly by the Knownothings in 1855, and to the State Senate by the 
Republicans in 1863, and in 1867 and again in 1871 was chosen county 
judge. He was also supervisor of Malone for a number of terms, and 
in every relation of life was uncompromising and outspoken. Of the 
temperament and conviction of seemliness that would not countenance 
the slightest effort on his own part to gain office, his record of office- 
holding testified impressively the estimate of his ability and character 
that was widely held by the people. Judge Hobbs was probably the 
best judge of law that the county ever had, though not the shrewdest 
practitioner. He died April 11, 1897. 

Edward H. Hobbs, born in Ellenburgh in 1835, fitted for college at 
Franklin Academy, and was a student at Middlebury, Vt., when the 
civil war broke out. Giving up his collegiate course, he returned to 
Malone, and was active in recruiting the 98th regiment, of which he 
became adjutant. After his military sendee he studied law, and engaged 
in practice in Brooklvn and New York, where he gained a high rank 
in the profession. He took an active part in Kings county politics, and 



Biographical Sketches 743 

was regarded for years as the most influential Republican in Brooklyn. 
Major Hobbs was a cousin of Judge Albert Hobbs of Malone. He died 
August 12, 1907. 

Oliver Howard, born in Milton, Vt., April 5, 1821, came to Malone 
in 1855, contracted for a farm without means to pay any part of the 
purchase price, and engaged in farming in the eastern part of the 
town. Hard work, frugal living and shrewd investments gave him more 
than a modicum of this world's goods, and about 1864 ho moved Into the 
village and engaged in merchandising. Mr. Howard was known as a 
"close" man, and accordingly was more or less misjudged, though 
when men came to know him they recognized that he was thoroughly 
honest and just. At the time of his death he was the largest single 
taxpayer in Malone, and his estate was appraised at $117,000, but was 
undoubtedly considerably larger. His real estate holdings, especially 
of business properties and tenements in the village, were considerable. 
He died June 28, 1888. 

William H. Hyde, born at Grand Isle, Vt., July 12, 1826, came to 
Bangor about 1849 or 1850. He was railroad station agent at North 
Bangor for a number of years, and when the 60th regiment was 
organized during the civil war he raised a company for it, and was 
commissioned captain. Upon his return to Bangor he engaged in the 
mercantile business, and in 1869 was elected sheriff as a Republican. 
He was alert, resolute and faithful, and made an excellent official. 
When the Jewett milk pan was invented he undertook, in partnership 
with L. R. Townsend, at Malone, the manufacture and sale of the pan, 
and for years did a large business. The factory was afterward removed 
to Cortland. Mr. Hyde died at Malone June 16, 1886. 

George Hawkins, born in St. Mathias, Que., June 18, 1830, came to 
Malone in early youth. He assisted in surveying the route for the 
Northern Railroad, and then engaged in the mercantile business, but 
with disastrous results, though afterward, notwithstanding he had boon 
legally released from his debts, he paid every dollar of his obligations 
in full. He was for a number of years associated with Mr. Wheeler and 
Mr. House in the old State Bank of Malone, and when the National 
Bank of Malone was organized in 1865 became its cashier, and so 
remained for about twenty years. He organized the Bank of Chateau- 
gay, and was its working head until he died. Mr. Hawkins was one of 



744 History of Franklin County 

the first to suggest the lighting of Malone's streets with gas, and was 
foremost in organizing the old gas company, in which the stockholders 
lost almost every dollar that they put into it. He was an enthusiastic 
worker in the cause of education, and was for many years a member of 
the board of education. He died very suddenly June 7, 1896. 

Allen Hinman was born in Vergennes, Vt., in 1820. After studying 
medicine he located in Bangor in 1842 for the practice of his pro- 
fession, and about ten years later removed to Constable, where he 
remained until about 1865, when he returned to Bangor — ever after 
making his home there. His health not being rugged, he discontinued 
his practice, and engaged in the drug business until 1877, from which 
time he led a retired life. While in Constable he was deputy collector 
of customs at Trout Eiver, and also served the town as supervisor. In 
Bangor also he was supervisor and postmaster. He died July 30, 1896, 
suddenly. 

Floyd J. Hadley, born in Westville, July 27, 1852, served his town 
as supervisor, and in 1885 was elected to the Assembly as a Bepublican, 
holding the office for three terms, and winning a creditable standing in 
that body. At the conclusion of his legislative service he formed a con- 
nection with the Fidelity and Casualty Company of New York, which 
continued until his death, which followed a surgical operation. He 
died in New York July 20, 1895. 

William P. Hawley, born in Malone, February 28, 1856, entered the 
employ of the paper mill in his early youth as a fireman, and was 
advanced from grade to grade until he became not only an expert paper 
maker, but familiar with every detail of the business. In 1877 he 
removed to California, where he engaged in mining for a time, and then 
returned to making paper for a company in which the late Boswell P. 
Flower had a large interest. Afterward he built a number of mills for 
various companies, and then, organizing a company of his own, built 
and has since operated a large mill at Oregon City, Oregon — enlarging 
it and adding other mills from time to time until now he turns out a 
hundred tons of paper per day. The corporation is styled the Hawley 
Pulp and Paper Co., and Mr. Hawley is its president. The business 
has yielded him a fortune. Mr. Hawley is interested largely in a number 
of flouring mills also, and some conception of the extensiveness of his 
operations may be formed from the fact that in 1917 his corporations 
paid in war taxes over a half million dollars ! 



Biographical Sketches 745 

Joseph H. Jackson, born at New Durham, N". H., June 11, 1787, 

studied law in New York city after his graduation from Dartmouth 
College, and practiced in Albany for a time before Locating in Malone 
about 1833. Mr. Jackson was a man of illustrious abilities, and a 
remarkably strong lawyer. It used to be said of him that his mind was 
so disciplined and precise that before putting a pen to paper he had 
always so thoroughly digested his subject that in reducing his plead- 
ings or communications to the press to writing there never had to be a 
single erasure or interlineation. The county probably never had an 
abler lawyer. He was appointed district attorney in 1841, was elected 
to the Assembly in 1843, and in 1844 was the Whig nominee for canal 
commissioner. He died January 7, 1856. 

William A. Jones, born at Lancaster, Ont., September 25, 1834, 
removed at an early age with his parents to St. Lawrence county, and 
when old enough to fend for himself came to Malone, worked his way 
through Franklin Academy, then clerked in the drug store of Lauriston 
Amsden, and at length began business on his own account as a grocer. 
During the civil war he raised a company for the 11 2d regiment, and 
became its captain. He was an efficient and brave officer, and was 
successively promoted to be major and lieutenant-colonel — in which 
latter rank he was for a time in command of the regiment. Soon after 
his return to Malone he was appointed to a clerkship in the New York 
custom house, and was advanced for efficiency to be a deputy collector, 
and also at one time to be deputy naval officer of the port. His entire 
service in the custom house covered a period of more than twenty years 
— during the latter part of which, and afterward, he made his home 
at Richmond Hill, L. I. Twenty years ago or such a matter he pur- 
chased what had once been the Ferguson hop farms in the village of 
Malone, and thereafter made his home in summer here, and was one of 
the most thorough, as well as one of the largest, growers in the State. 
Colonel Jones was companionable and genial, warm in his friendships, 
public spirited, progressive, and ardent in politics — having been a 
Republican from his early manhood, and always a party worker. He 
died December 12, 1909. 

William King, born in New Hampshire in 1793, came to Malone in 
1831, and established a tannery and boot and shoe shop on Mill street, 
which he continued successfully for a number of years, in 1S37 he 
engaged in the mercantile business in a long, low frame building that 
stood on the site of the present King Block, but was moved in 1850 to 



746 History of Franklin County 

the west of the block, and turned end to the street. In 1848 he admitted 
his son, William Wallace, and the next year Howard E., to a partner- 
ship, and a little later disposed of the business as a whole to them. Pie 
built on Catherine street, in 1844, the first potato starch factory in the 
county, and at various times was engaged in a considerable number of 
enterprises, including farming and lumbering in a large way for that 
time. Ill educated, he was a man of uncommon natural abilities, was 
notably successful in his undertakings, and for a long time was a force 
in all of the town's affairs. He was appointed judge of the court of 
common pleas in 1843. His home was where the Hyde and F. W. 
Lawrence Co. stores now are, and was burned March 27, 1847 — the 
date having been cited commonly for half a century as the time of the 
greatest snow storm ever known in Malone. The snow was four feet 
deep on the level, all of it having fallen that day, and made it impos- 
sible to get the old fire engine to the ground, and practically prevented 
efficient fighting of the flames in any way. The house was rebuilt, and 
stood, with alterations, until 1899. Mr. King's judgment commanded 
universal respect, and his purpose to be helpful in all proper directions 
was manifested to the end. He was stricken with paralysis in 18G1, 
and for nearly two years had no use of his limbs, and only a slight 
command of the organs of speech, but the vigor and clarity of his 
intellect continued unimpaired. He died August 3, 1863. 

William Wallace King, born in Keene, N". H., August 18, 1823, 
came to Malone with his father in 1831. What his boyhood was no 
now procurable data tell definitely, but as in his time children were 
seldom reared in idleness, no matter what the circumstances of their 
parents, it is a safe assumption that in some way he had to " earn his 
keep." In 1848 he became a partner with his father in the mercantile 
business, and continued in that line, together with various outside 
enterprises, until 1875, when he relinquished his interest in the store 
for some of the firm's other investments. In 1877 failing health and 
mind compelled his withdrawal practically from all business activities. 
As long as he was himself, however, he was one of the shrewdest, most 
energetic and dominating characters, and one of the most extensive 
operators, particularly in hops and starch, that Malone ever had, and 
also one of the most successful. He was enterprising and public 
spirited to a degree, with an aggressive interest in politics, though never 
seeking or holding public office except that he was county treasurer 
from 1852 to 1855, that he was once supervisor, and that he was village 



Biographical Sketches 747 

president -the first to hold the last named position who distinguished 
his service by real progressiveness. It was under his administration 
that Memorial Park was greatly improved: that care was exercised for 
the first time to keep the streets cleanly; and that the space between the 
sidewalks and the curbs was made greensward and kept nicely trimmed 
Much of the new work of an adorning character was performed at Mr 
Kings personal expense, his own private employee devoting most of his 
time to village service. The writer recalls having complimented Mr 
lying upon the great improvements that he had accomplished, but with 
inquiry as to what the taxpayers would say when they came to learn the 
. cost Mr. King's reply is worth repeating: " Don't worry about that 
my boy; for the people never kick provided they get their money's 
worth. He was right, and the amazing feature of the matter to-day 
is that the entire village tax then was only about five thousand dollars 
while now it ranges around forty thousand dollars. When not dis- 
turbed by cares, or thwarted in his plans, Mr. King was one of the 
most genial of men, with a keen liking for fun, and always willing to 
pay to have it provided. If anxious or annoyed, few could be more 
abrupt or gruff. He was an excellent citizen, useful in a multitude of 
ways. For the last few months of his life he was helpless physically 
and a mental wreck. He died September 15, 1881. 

Howard E, King, born in Putney, Vt., August 19, 1825, came to 
Malone with his parents in 1831, and for forty years from the time of 
attaining his majority was a conspicuous factor in the business and 
political life of the town and county. As a bov he worked in the old 
cotton factory, on a farm, and finally as clerk in his father's store — 
becoming a partner in the latter in 1849, and subsequently acquiring 
the business with his brother, William Wallace. This partnership con* 
tinued until 1875, when the senior member retired, and John W. Fay 
and William H. King succeeded to an interest in the business. Then 
Mr. Fay withdrew, and H. E. King & Son continued it until they failed 
m 1899, with liabilities of $82,000. The King store had been regarded 
for nearly half a century as one of the strongest in this section of the 
State, and had enjoyed a remarkably large trade. It never pretended 
to offer low prices, but in a period when barter and charge accounts 
were more a feature of merchandizing than now it did extend prac- 
tically unlimited credit, and never demanded settlements while a cus- 
tomer continued willing to be charged interest on balances. The 
failure was caused in large part by losses on hops, which the firm 



748 History of Franklin County 

handled extensively. From the time of the failure to his death Mr. 
King, broken in health and spirit, lived quietly, and without occupation 
other than that of collector of village school taxes. He had been super- 
visor of Malone for nine years, was for a long time president of the 
Peoples National Bank, and was always interested in politics and public 
matters. He was courteous, considerate and respected. He died July 
9, 1909. 

In connection with these King personal sketches it would be inex- 
cusable to omit mention of King's Hall — a room to which .attach more 
stirring and touching memories than any other in Malone except the 
churches. Its seating capacity was perhaps four hundred, and its fur- 
nishings only a small, low platform or stage, and benches for seats. Yet 
it was for nearly twenty years from 1850 the only assembly room in 
the town other than the churches and the court room; and in it were 
given such lectures, concerts and minstrel entertainments as the place 
enjoyed, and there also most public and political meetings used to be held. 
Down its stairs and pouring into the street, to the strains of martial 
music, came the Wide Awakes in uniform and with torches and banners 
in the memorable Lincoln campaign of 1860, and there, too, a few 
months later we had one of our first war meetings, when hearts beat 
riotously and blood ran hot because Sumter had been fired upon. 
Our first company of volunteers was recruited there in April of 1861. 
It was in this hall also that many war meetings were held during the 
ensuing four years, and that much of the Republican party's local his- 
tory was enacted and written, it having been for twenty years the place 
for holding caucuses and conventions. Here, too, in the time when 
there was neither telegraph nor telephone reaching to most of the out 
lying towns, the Republicans were accustomed to gather on electioi 
night to receive the returns — men driving for long distances through 
mud and storm to bring tidings from their respective districts, and 
telegraphic reports coming in to tell of results in the State at large. 
All hearts overflowed with gladness if the news were good, and from 
time to time until early morning hours jocular or impassioned shoi 
talks were made by Wheeler, Dickinson, Parmelee, Seaver, Hobbs, 
Kilburn, Brennan, Gilbert and others. If its walls could but speal 
what a story they might tell! For all this Republican usage never was 
more than a nominal charge made, and often there was no bill at all 
not even for the gas that was burned. In 1884 the hall was convertec 
into a lodge room for the Odd Fellows, and is now the meeting rooi 
for the Grange. 



Biographical Sketches 749 

Abraham Klohs, bom in Exeter, Perm., in 1819, was educated as a 
mechanical and civil engineer, and his first railroad work was on the 
Reading in the latter capacity. Next he was similarly employed in 
Ireland for two years, and in 1849 joined the force which was then 
building the old Northern Eailroad (now the 0. & L. C. division of the 
Rutland), and with the exception of two periods aggregating six or 
seven years remained with the line until his death. After construction 
was finished his service was altogether as master mechanic or super- 
intendent, with location at first at Rouses Point, but after 1858 at 
Malone. Painstaking to give an efficient and safe service, Mr. Klohs 
was otherwise much of the Vanderhilt mould — resentful of outside 
inquiry concerning accidents, delays or methods of management, and 
disposed to hold that " the public be damned " ; and when annoyed 
quite apt to make that vieAV manifest in a direct, emphatic and brusque 
manner. Otherwise he was genial and sociable, and was a favorite with 
the men under him and with people generally. Of inventive mind, he 
perfected many devices which became invaluable in railroad operation, 
and which he gave freely to the company. Had he chosen to patent 
these, they would undoubtedly have made him independently rich. Mr. 
Klohs died at Malone April 14, 1885. 

Nathan Knapp, born in Bangor, February 21, 1824, came to Malone 
in 1841, and after having clerked for a time for his uncle, Wells Knapp, 
entered upon the mercantile business on his own account — continuing 
in trade successfully to the day of his death. Of quick perception, 
sound judgment, and a ready and diligent application, Mr. Knapp 
quickly established himself in the front rank of Malone's business men, 
with a high character for integrity, and in enjoyment of the entire con- 
fidence of the community. In 1866 he succeeded Edwin L. Meigs for 
a few months as president of the Farmers National Bank. He died 
February 23, 1867. 

Henry G. Kilburn, born in Poultney, Vt., August 21, 1824, became 
a bloomer in iron works in Essex county, but, having ambition for a 
higher and broader life, studied law, and after admission to the bar 
located in 1859 at Fort Covington. The place offered few opportunities, 
and the struggle for a few years was trying and strenuous. Tn 1870 
Mr. Kilburn came to Malone, where his sturdy common sense, clear 
perception of the essentials in a case, and his vigorous prosecution of 
suits soon brought him clients in considerable numbers and gained him 



750 History of Franklin County 

a good standing at the bar. It was enjoyable to listen to his quaint 
expressions and unique and striking illustrations in argument before a 
jury, which usually won the good nature and sympathy of the men with 
whom the interests of his clients rested, while at the same time he 
drove home his points of law and equity in a homely but effectual way. 
In 1883 he was elected district attorney, and was twice re-elected. 
Politically he was a radical of the radicals — an ardent anti-slavery 
man before the civil war, and afterward a Republican without wavering 
or shadow of turning — incapable even of comprehending how any one 
could take any course except to support unquestioningly the regularly 
made nominations of his party. During his final years he was a suf- 
ferer from an excrutiatingly painful ailment, and was compelled by it 
to retire from active practice. He died January 20, 1899. 

Frederick D. Kilburn, born in Clinton county, July 25, 1850, came 
to Fort Covington with his parents in 1859. It is told of one of his 
long-ago ancestors that, having lost an axe through the ice on a pond, 
he unhesitatingly followed it into the water, and recovered it. True or 
false, the reported incident is characteristic of the subject of this 
sketch — for what he wanted he always went after with determination, 
and usually found. Thrown upon his own resources at an early age, he 
worked for his education, and in early manhood was an admitted and 
well equipped attorney at law, building up an excellent business. But 
in 1885 he abandoned practice to become the vice-president and active 
manager of the then newly organized Peoples National Bank of Malonc, 
in which relation he continued for nearly eleven years — gaining 
invaluable personal experience and making the bank a pronounced suc- 
cess. Both before and during this service Mr. Kilburn was conspicu- 
ously active as a Republican worker and leader, and for a number of 
years was the unquestioned head of the party organization in Franklin 
county. He was in turn town clerk, clerk of the board of supervisors, 
and county treasurer for six years. In 1891 in a memorable judicial 
convention deadlock, the delegates turned spontaneously to Mr. Kilburn 
as the one man who could resolve all conflicting interests, and unani- 
mously offered him the nomination, equivalent to election, for justice 
of the supreme court ; but having been out of active practice for several 
years, he doubted his qualifications for the office, and declined the 
honor. In 1892 he was elected to the State Senate by the district com- 
posed of Washington, Warren, Essex, Clinton and Franklin couniios — 
the largest in area and with the greatest population in the State — and, 



Biographical Sketches 751 

though without previous legislative experience and serving in a body 
of exceptionally strong men, commanded immediate consideration by 
his older colleagues, and quick admission into their most intimate 
councils. In January, 1896, Mr. Kilburn was appointed State super- 
intendent of banks, and was successively reappointed by three Governors 
— holding the office until 1907, when he resigned with a record for 
thoroughness and efficiency of administration which was recognized and 
admired by all of the banking interests of the State, and which brought 
him from time to time most tempting offers to associate himself with 
large banks or trust companies. His service as State superintendent of 
banks compelled his retirement from the active management of his 
home bank, and after 1907 Mr. Kilbourn had no confining business 
occupation except during the years when he was the head of the Malone 
Light and Power Company — in which he sold his stock and interest 
in 1914. But he was nevertheless far from idle during this period, 
since his qualifications for leadership and executive management, with 
the possession of the energy which forces action and co-operation by 
others, were so generally recognized that whenever any local project of 
public consequence seemed to call for unusual effort and care, he 
was drafted by the compelling will of his townsmen to take the lead 
and carry the purpose to consummation. A ready and forceful speaker, 
and always in earnest, he was often made the spokesman at public 
meetings of community sentiment on large questions of a non-partisan 
character, and was also the most popular and effective Republican cam- 
paigner in the county. For a matter of a third of a century Mr. Kil- 
burn was more closely and helpfully identified than any other single 
citizen with large movements that looked to the betterment of Malone — 
having been a leader in the reorganization of the waterworks company 
that made Horse brook its principal source of supply: untiring in aiding 
to raise the bonus which Dr. Webb required in consideration of bringing 
the Adirondack and St. Lawrence "Railway here; and a principal factor 
in giving the town an adequate and high-class electric and gas lighting 
plant. Then he became the head of the home-defense organization for 
Franklin county, and gave practically all of his time to patriotic work. 
Tn a word, Mr. Kilburn was the county's foremost figure in every large 
local undertaking which appealed to public spirit, and had for its aim 
advancement of the general welfare and patriotic endeavor; and was 
the most capable and strongest all-around man in Northern Xew York. 
He died December 2, 1917, broken down by the war work that he 
performed. 



752 History of Franklin County 

Julius M. Keeler, son of Elijah, a pioneer, was born in Malone in 
1825, and was one of those infected with the California gold fever of 
1849. He was living in Connecticut at the outbreak of the civil war, 
was commissioned a captain in one of the regiments of that State, and 
was stationed for service in Oregon. After the close of the war he 
founded Oregon State University, and became one of its faculty. He 
located afterward in California, and died there January 28, 1890. 

John Clarence Keeler (son of Colonel Carlos C. Keeler) was born 
in Malone February 17, 1851, and located in New York city in 1871, 
where he became a clerk in the office of the district attorney. In 18S2 
he was appointed by Attorney-General Leslie W. Eussell a deputy, and 
after two years' service in that capacity located at Canton for the 
practice of his profession. He was an acute and strong lawyer, and had 
many notable court successes. He was member of Assembly for one of 
the St. Lawrence county districts in 1892 and 1893. He died in New 
York city October 18, 1899. 

Birney B. Keeler (son of Amos JB. and brother of John S.) was 
born in Malone in 1840, and entered the army as a first lieutenant in 
the 112d regiment — serving throughout the remainder of the war, and 
rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Tn 1865 he enlisted in the 
regular army, receiving a commission at once, and from that date until 
his death in 1886 was detailed nearly all of the time to staff duty — 
serving for many years at San Francisco as judge-advocate on the staff 
of General McDowell. Colonel Keeler was a natural soldier, loved the 
profession, and was thoroughly competent in it. He had a brilliant 
mind and a fine presence, and was always an engaging companion. 

James W. Kimball, born at Lawrence, K. Y., June 30, 1825, located 
at Fort Covington in 1845, and for seven years was a merchant's clerk. 
In 1852 he began a mercantile business for himself, with a capital of 
$300, and closed out in 1863. Acquisitive, energetic, enterprising and 
notably shrewd, he was successful to a degree, and was understood to 
have accumulated $40,000 clear in these eleven years. He was active 
in Republican politics locally, was supervisor for five years during the 
civil war, and served in the Assembly in 1865, 1866 and 1867. There 
were whisperings at the time that he had made some of his votes in 
the Legislature profitable to himself ; but I recall having been present 
at a conversation wherein he reviewed all of the charges and suspicions 



Biographical Sketches 753 

of that sort, and with a clearness and vigor that was convincing to me 
denied and refuted every accusation ever made against him. He was in 
no sense an orator or public speaker, but a stronger and more persuasive 
talker I have seldom heard. He died March 7, 1872. 

John Kelley, born in Franklin, Franklin county, Vt., January 20, 
1841, came to Bellmont with his parents in 1842, and has ever since 
resided in Bellmont or Malone. There were eight children in the 
family, and the father not having been strong, the duty of caring for 
the mother and for the sisters and younger brothers devolved largely 
upon the subject of this sketch from the time that he was old enough 
to work, which in those days was at an early age. There was little time 
for attending school, and except for a few winter weeks in district schools 
Mr. Kelley had no educational opportunities until at the age of nine- 
teen he succeeded in arranging with 0. T. Hosford to work for his 
board and attend Franklin Academy. Students in this day who some- 
times feel that their struggle is a hard one may find encouragement in 
learning what that schooling cost Mr. Kelley. He had to take care of 
fifteen head of cattle, saw the daily supply of wood, draw hay or fill 
ice houses every Saturday, and give one cord of wood from his father's 
farm (which he chopped himself out of school hours) for each week's 
board and lodging — hauling the wood with a yoke of oxen. But it 
was more an actual, intense hunger for knowledge and self-improvement, 
prompting to home study and omnivorous reading, that gave to Mr. 
Kelley his remarkable fund of general information and equipped him 
to put his thoughts and convictions on paper in a strikingly readable and 
persuasive way. Mr. Kelley continued to make Bellmont his home until 
1880, always taking interest and bearing his part in the duties of good 
citizenship. He held there the offices of constable, commissioner of 
highways, justice of the peace and supervisor, and was also a justice of 
sessions when the county court of sessions used to have its so-called 
"side judges." Upon his removal to Malone Mr. Kelley bought and 
engaged in operating a planing mill and sash and trim factory, in which 
business he still continues. In the years when political ardor moves 
men more than it is apt to do in age Mr. Kelley was one of the most 
active, enthusiastic and influential Democrats in the county, but always 
from conviction, and never as a self-seeker. His leadership gave him 
close relations with Governors Hill, Flower and Dix, and with Senator 
Murphy, so that more than once he was able through them to promote 
local enterprises of importance to Malone and Franklin county. Mr. 



754 History of Franklin County 

Kelley has always taken a broad and intelligent interest in local public 
affairs, and especially in the public schools. For forty years be was a 
school trustee, and at present is president of the Malone village board 
of education. 

John P. Kellas, born at Mooers Forks, N. Y., September 13, 1854, 
came to Malone to study law in 1877. Following his admission to the 
bar, he entered upon the practice, and quickly gained an assured stand- 
ing in the profession. A diligent student, with a keen appreciation of 
the salient questions in a case, with a painstaking attention to the niceties 
and twists of procedure, and with a natural aggressiveness and persist- 
ence that contested every point to the uttermost, Mr. Kellas became one 
of the most formidable trial lawyers at the Franklin county bar. About 
1900 he became the attorney locally for William GL Eockefeller, and 
in time was associated with him in deals in timber lands which yielded 
a nice return. Mr. Kellas engaged also in a number of other outside 
enterprises which proved profitable, and evinced in all of them a shrewd- 
ness and sagacity of business judgment that have made him well to do. 
Among these investments are an electric lighting plant at Champlain. 
and practically the sole ownership of a railroad which runs from Wil- 
mington, Yt., to the Hoosac Tunnel, Mass. Though Mr. Kellas con- 
tinues in the practice of the law, his other interests have become so 
numerous and important as to occupy more of his attention, and his 
appearance in court in recent years has been confined largely to 
important cases. 

Anslem Lincoln, born at Cohasset, Mass., January 10, 1701, was 
a soldier in the war of 1812, and came to Malone in 1815, having been 
twelve days in making the journey from Boston. There were then only 
twenty houses on the east side of the river, and but a slightly larger 
number on the west side. Mr. Lincoln began business here as a shoe- 
maker, and then as a tanner. He mingled but little in public affairs, 
but was an exemplary citizen. He died October 20, 1888. 

Darius Watts Lawrence, born in Moira, February 19, 1822, was in 
business at an early age, and, forming a partnership a few years later 
with his cousin, Clark ,T., continued merchandising until 1867, when, 
yielding to persistent urging, he came to Malone to become cashier of 
the Farmers National Bank, of which he became president a few years 
later, and so remained until the day of his death, taking an active part 
in the management. The firm of D. W. & C. J. Lawrence was one of 



Biographical Sketches 755 

the strongest in the county, both in its individual composition and in 
the extent of its operations and of its resources. Each of the members 
had superior judgment, great energy and enterprise, and commanded 
the entire trust and confidence of the community. Their success was 
notable, each having accumulated a hundred thousand dollars or more 
before closing their Moira business. Mr. Lawrence filled a conspicuous 
part in the business life of Malone, his bank connection alone having 
been important, and other undertakings having also engaged his atten- 
tion. He was one of the builders of the Ferguson House and Lawrence 
Hall in 1869, became a director of the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain 
Eailroad Co., was long a member of the village board of education, was 
heavily interested and actively occupied in the Lawrence-Webster woolen 
mills, and for thirty years or more was a trustee of the Northern New 
York Institution for Deaf-Mutes and its treasurer. Having the pres- 
tige of the Lawrence name, which meant much fifty or sixty years ago, 
particularly in the western part of the county, Mr. Lawrence was elected 
to the Assembly in 1851 and 1852 as a Democrat, and, for some reason 
unknown to the writer, was then known politically as " the Young 
Buffalo." Thereafter for a period of more than thirty years he was 
regarded as the most popular Democrat in the county, and was often 
drafted by his party as its candidate for one or another officte — par- 
ticularly for member of Assembly or county treasurer — whenever it was 
sought to make an especially telling canvass, or to conduct a determined 
drive against a Republican who was thought to be weak with the voters. 
Though himself usually passive in such contests, and the county being 
strongly Republican, he nevertheless invariably made an excellent show- 
ing, and ran well ahead of his ticket. Personally Mr. Lawrence was one 
of the most estimable of men in the county, sagacious in judgment, 
public spirited, and upright in every walk of life. Willi grievous afflic- 
tions and sorroAvs thrust upon him, he yet seemed always genial, and 
radiated sunshine. He died suddenly November 26, 1913. 

Clark J. Lawrence, born in Moira in 1832. began business life in 
that village at an early age in partnership with his cousin, Darius VV. 
Lawrence. The firm's operations, varied and extensive, included general 
merchandising, the manufacture of starch and lumber, and dealing in 
farm produce. Careful, shrewd and competent, the} were prosp< red 
from the first, and when they closed oul active undertakings in Moira 
in 1867, to associate themselves with the management of the Farmers' 
National Bank of Malone, each had accumulated a handsome property. 



756 History of Franklin County 

For thirty years Mr. Lawrence was vice-president of the bank, and was 
not only assiduous in his application to the management, but brought to 
the conduct of its affairs an acumen and soundness of judgment of a 
high order, which counted heavily for the institution's success and pros- 
perity. In 1897 he retired from active sharing in administration of 
the bank, though remaining a director and always interested and an 
advisor in it until his death. Apart from the bank connection, he was 
interested in no general business undertaking after his removal from 
Moira with the exception of a partnership of three years with Clinton 
Stevens in the furniture trade. Twenty years ago or such a matter there 
began to be suggestion and tentative agitation for the establishment of 
a general hospital in Malone, and in 1904 an incorporation was effected 
to further the project. Nothing was really accomplished, however, until 
in 1910 Mrs. Angle Hardy Leighton bequeathed ten thousand dollars 
and Baker Stevens gave a five thousand dollar farm to the association, 
and thereafter the movement made no progress until in 1911 Mr. Law- 
rence added twenty-five thousand dollars to the fund — the gift carrying 
no conditions except that an equal amount be raised by general subscrip- 
tion and that the institution be named the Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital, 
in memory of the donor's deceased niece — a woman of lovable traits 
and character, who had been as a daughter to Mr. Lawrence from her 
childhood. Both conditions were fully met, with the result that in 1913 
the institution was opened, completely equipped, and has since been 
doing continuously a beneficent work. By his will Mr. Lawrence, having 
no children, gave his entire estate of fifty-odd thousand dollars, less four 
bequests of a thousand dollars each to relatives, to further endow the 
hospital — the will reciting that Mrs. Lawrence, possessing ample means 
of her own, had requested that nothing be devised to her. Comment upon 
the splended benefaction would be superfluous. Mr. Lawrence person- 
ally was not of easy approach upon terms of intimacy, notwithstanding 
he was at heart companionable and enjoyed keenly the pleasure of asso- 
ciation with those for Avhom he cared. One had to know him particularly 
well in order really to know him at all, and to appreciate his fine qualities 
of mind and character. He died after a brief illness September 1, 1917. 

Timothy B. Ladd, born in Meredith, X. H., in April, 1820, came 
to northern New York about 1850, and was yard master of the old 
Northern Bailroad at Ogdensburg until 1855, when he became road- 
master, with headquarters at Malone, and so served for ten years. He 
then bought the Union House at Chateaugay, and was its landlord until 
he died, January 7, 1887. 



Biographical Sketches j 757 

Eugene H. Ladd, bom in Meredith, N. H., in 1835, came to Malone 
to become a clerk in the offices of the Northern Ilailroad about 1856, 
and eventually became general ticket agent. In 1868 he bought the 
W. W. & H. E. King interest in the Horton grist mill and saw mill, 
and in time acquired sole ownership of the properties. William E. 
Smallman bought into the concern later, when its activities broadened, 
and grew to include large lumbering operations in Duane and Clin- 
ton Mills, hop growing on an extensive scale in Malone and Canada, 
and dealing in fine driving horses. Mr. Ladd was originally a Repub- 
lican in politics, but became a Democrat, and, naturally with his tem- 
perament, which often suggested the finding of a positive pleasure in 
antagonizing and defying any majority sentiment, was both more active 
and more bitterly partisan in the latter relation than he had ever been in 
the former. But he was never much of a party worker or manager, his 
business interests generally engrossing his attention. In this field he 
was remarkably capable, systematic, self -poised and successful. Not 
readily admitting men to friendship, he was steadfast and warm to 
those to whom he did give confidence and regard. He served one term 
as president of the village, and in affairs which enlisted his interest he 
always showed zeal and efficiency. He was especially active and useful 
in the campaign to raise the fund required to bring to Malone the 
Adirondack and St. Lawrence Eailway. He died March 3, 1908. 

Uriah D. Meeker, born in Washington county April 24, 1804, 
removed with his parents to Massena, and in 1829 located at Fort Cov- 
ington, where he established himself as a merchant for one year, after 
which he was in trade at Bangor for a short time. Returning to 
Fort Covington in 1831, he again opened a store there. For nine years 
from 1834 he was county clerk, and then deputy county clerk under his 
successor in office. In 1853 he became a merchant in Malone, continu- 
ing in business until 1862, when he was appointed assessor of internal 
revenue taxes, holding the office until his death. Mr. Meeker was of 
spotless integrity and irreproachable character; of exceptional abilities; 
kindly and companionable; and especially interested in the young, for 
whom he always had a pleasant greeting, and was ready as occasion sug- 
gested with words of encouragement and counsel. He was stricken with 
apoplexy April 5, 1868, and died instantly. 

Albon Piatt Man was born in Westville in 1810, and located in New 
York city in 1831, where he gained eminence in the law, and acquired 
a competence. He died March 30, 1891. 



758 History of Franklin County 

Hamlet B. Mears, for half a centur}*" or more a large figure in Fort 
Covington affairs, was born at Hawkesbury, Ont., and died at the former 
place in 1887. 

Andrew M. Millar, born in Scotland August 13, 1819, the son of 
Kev. James Millar, came to the United States with his parents, and, 
himself entering the ministry in 1842, became one of the best known 
clergymen in Northern New York, and had perhaps the longest service 
in it of any who ever officiated in the county. He preached his first 
sermon in Chaiteaugay, when the Presbyterian church there and its mem- 
bership in Burke were one, and continued so to serve until Burke was set 
off as a parish. He was thereafter pastor of the latter society until 189G — 
or for forty-four years without a break except for one year when he was 
ill and except also for the time that he was an army chaplain during 
the civil war. From 186S he was pastor also of a church which he organ- 
ized at Bellmont Center, and at one period served Constable also for 
seven years, the places being distant a number of miles from each other. 
Nevertheless Mr. Millar never permitted weather or any preventable 
cause to keep him from filling his appointments. He officiated at more 
than two thousand funerals, and preached six thousand sermons. No 
work was too arduous for him, and his life was of large usefulness, fine 
in its influence, and noble in all its aspects. From 1866 he made his 
home in Malone, where he died August 22, 1896. 

Edwin L. Meigs, son of Guy, was born in 1822 — probably in Con- 
stable, as his father (born in St. Albans, Vt., in 1793) is known to have 
been a resident there and to have been established in business in West- 
ville in 1824. Mr. Meigs became a merchant in Malone in 1845, and so 
continued, in various partnerships, for about eighteen years. He had 
also branch stores from time to time in Brushton, Constable and Trout 
River. Upon the incorporation of the Farmers National Bank of Malone 
in 1864 he was chosen president, and, his health having been somewhat 
impaired, the strain incident to the work of organizing and starting the 
institution's business taxed his strength so severely that after a few 
months he went to New York for medical advice and treatment, and 
died there. No shrewder, more capable business man, nor any one who 
was quicker and brighter mentally, ever lived in Malone. He was very 
popular personally, and had tremendous energy and a keen perception 
of opportunities. His operations were varied and numerous, and bis 
success uniform. He had five children, all of whom died without issue, 
so that his direct line is extinct. He died May 14, 1865. 



Biographical Sketches 759 

Albon P. Man, bom in Westville in June, 1826, studied Law in New 
York city after graduation at Union College, and about 1850 located in 
Malone for practice of the profession. He was also an expert surveyor. 
In 1859 he was elected district attorney, but before the completion of 
his term of office joined in raising the 98th regiment of volunteers in 
the civil war, and became major of the command. Mr. Man's tempera- 
ment was not martial, however, and the service became so irksome to him 
that after about a year in the field he resigned. He located in Xew 
York city soon after his return from the front, intending to practice 
law there, but in a short time was intrusted with the management of 
the large Lorillard estate and business, and for a considerable period 
gave practically all of his attention to the handling of that trust. Later 
he took up the study of electricity, and became an authority in the science. 
Forming a partnership with Frederick Sawyer, a practical worker in 
electrical problems and devices — Mr. Man supplying the suggestions 
and theories and Mr. Sawyer developing them — they accomplished 
between them results of value and importance. Among these was the 
invention and perfection of an incandescent lamp very like to that now 
in so general use; there was a long and hard contest in the courts for 
determination of whether they or Edison were first with the invention 
and patent. Though losing the legal battle, Mr. Man nevertheless 
insisted that the Sawyer-Man lamp antedated the Edison. Major Man 
was one of the most entertaining and informing conversationalists that 
it was ever my good fortune to know, and was in every way a high-minded 
and useful citizen. He died in Brooklyn February 18, 1905. 

VanBuren Miller, born in Harrietstown in 1827, became more 
familiar with the town's affairs, land titles and interests, and more useful 
in promoting and guarding them than any other resident. He was for 
many years supervisor. He died June 17, 1892. 

Michael S. Mallon was born in Malone July 5, 1835. In his youth 
and young manhood he was clerk in a number of stores, and about 1S63 
formed a partnership with Charles L. Hubbard, which continued until 
a competence had been gained, and advancing years brought inclination 
to retire from business activities in 1896. Thereafter Mr. Mallon served 
many of his former customers and friends as executor or administrator, 
always managing their affairs prudently, faithfully and successfully, lie 
was long an active and valued member of the board of education, and by 
wise counsel continued until his death useful both in a public way and 
to his friends and neighbors. He died November 20, 1915. 



760 History of Franklin County 

George Barry Mallon, son of Michael S., was born in Malone May 
20, 1865, and at once after graduation at Amherst College in 1887 
entered upon journalistic work on the New York Sun — advancing in 
the importance of his assignments from time to time until he became 
city editor. His work was of a high grade, and his personality won for 
him the entire trust of the management and the warm regard of every- 
body who knew him. He became one of the most charming and most 
sought after-dinner speakers in New York. In 1916 he withdrew from 
the Sun to take the management and editorship of the Butterick publica- 
tions at a handsome salary, but resigned the position in 1917, applying 
himself for several months to war work. Recently he has become a 
member of the staff of the Bankers Trust Company in New York city, 
holding a responsible and important position in the institution. 

Almerin W. Merrick, born in Fort Covington in 1836, was a farmer 
there all of his life except six years, from 1873 to 1879, when he was 
county clerk. He gained the nomination by his own almost unaided 
work, the Bepublican leaders having generally preferred another candi- 
date. It was only by the hardest kind of work that he was defeated for 
nomination for a third term, and in 1885 he again failed by but a 
narrow margin of being nominated. He died from the effects of an 
injury October 3, 1891. 

John H. Moffitt was born in Chazy January 8, 1843. He enlisted 
in the 16th regiment at the outbreak of the civil war, and was one of 
the best soldiers in that fine command. From 1866 to 1872 he was 
deputy collector of customs at Rouses Point, and then until 1877 was 
engaged in the manufacture of charcoal at Mofntsville. In 1877 he 
located at Chateaugay Lake as superintendent at that point for the 
( hateaugay Ore and Iron Co., and his activity in politics and personal 
popularity soon made him one of the foremost Republicans in the county. 
He was elected to Congress in 1886 and again in 1888. In 1891 he 
became manager of the street railways in Syracuse, and so continued for 
eight and a half years, after which he was for two years in charge of the 
city's water works. In 1902 he was elected cashier of the Plattsburgh 
National Bank, and in 1904 its president, which position he still holds. 
Mr. Moffitt is always earnest and energetic, has sound business judgment 
and fine executive capacity, and is of notably genial and likable 
personality. 

Daniel P. Morse, a grandson of Ashbel Parmelee, D. D., was born 
in Malone April 6, 1852, and after quitting school was associated with 



Biographical Sketches 761 

his father for a time in the boot and shoe business in Malone. In 1872 
he obtained a position with a wholesale boot and shoe house in New York 
city, and after a dozen years of experience and study of the business 
branched out on his own account. His success has been pronounced, and 
no man now stands higher in the trade. Mr. Morse soon convinced him- 
self that the business was conducted generally on mistaken and illogical 
lines, which he proceeded to reform so far at least as his own establish- 
ment was concerned. The course that he pursued other dealers quickly 
recognized as wise, and all followed his methods, so that the trade is 
now upon wholly different lines from those that formerly obtained. Mr. 
Morse's business is of very large proportions, and his house is known 
as one of the most reliable and progressive in the United States. 

Gordon H. Main, born at Franklin Center, Quebec, September 29, 
1852, came to Burke as a child with his parents, and after attendance 
at Franklin Academy and admission to the bar located in Chateaugay for 
practice, but subsequently removed to Malone. Naturally aggressive 
and combative, with decidedly set convictions, which he was accustomed 
to express vigorously, and with a faculty for getting at the root of 
things, Mr. Main quickly made himself a force at the bar. He was as 
pronounced and positive politically as in other matters, and was often 
heard on the stump in advocacy of Eepublican candidates and policies. 
He was elected district attorney in 1898, and held the office for nine 
years. He died at the Ogdensburg City Hospital November 25, 1911. 

N. Monroe Marshall was born in Schuyler Falls, N. Y., June 13, 
1854, and his home conditions were such that he was compelled to fend 
for himself from the age of fourteen years, from which time he worked 
for six years at the machinists' trade. In 1874 he became telegraph 
operator and station agent for the Chateaugay R. E., and a little later 
came to Chateaugay Lake to be bookkeeper for the Chateaugay Ore and 
Iron Co. While so employed he lost his right arm at the shoulder by 
the accidental discharge of his gun, but in six weeks after his return 
to his desk was able to write as legible and handsome a hand as any 
employer would care to have appear on his books. He served Bellmont 
as supervisor in 1885, and the same year, after a memorable canvass, was 
nominated as a Eepublican for county clerk. He served six years in the 
office, and then was with the Fidelity and Casualty Company until 1895 
as adjuster of claims — visiting nearly every State in the Union. In 
1895 he became vice-president and manager of the Farmers National 
Bank of Malone, and in 1896 transferred his services to the People's 



762 History of Franklin County 

National Bank of Malone, having been elected vice-president of that 
institution upon the appointment of Frederick D. Kilburn to be State 
superintendent of banks. In 1899 he was elected president, and still 
continues in the same capacity with a fine record of successful manage- 
ment — deposits having increased in the period by nearly $400,000, and 
the gain in surplus and undivided profits having been $316,500. Mr. 
Marshall was elected to the State Senate as a Eepublican by the Frank- 
lin-St. Lawrence district in 1914, and re-elected in 1916. His com- 
mittee assignments in that body have been of *the first order for a new 
member, and his standing with his colleagues and on the record is of the 
best. His sound business judgment, his certainty in aligning himself 
always on the right side on both party and purely public measures, his 
camaraderie, his readiness of wit, and his genius for invariably having a 
corking good story peculiarly apropos to any situation have made him 
one of the most popular and influential of the Senators. 

Martin Eugene McClary, born in Albany, Yt., February 15, 1854, 
came to Malone at once following his graduation from Dartmouth Col- 
lege in 1876 to become principal of Franklin Academy — which position 
he continued to hold with great acceptability to the board of education 
and with a brilliant record for high-class work for ten years. A thorough 
scholar, with a faculty for interesting students and for imparting instruc- 
tion, enthusiastic and untiring in his work, young enough to understand 
intuitively and intimately the tendencies and practices of youth and 
human enough to deal with them in a tactful way, Mr. McClary was 
one of the most successful heads that the academy ever had, and attached 
his pupils strongly in bonds of admiration and affection. During the 
closing years of his school service he studied law, and was admitted to 
the bar concurrently with the close of his term of teaching — at once 
opening an office in Malone, and continuing in practice here until his 
death. He held the office of school commissioner for six years from 
1891, and, with his interest in educational matters and his peculiar 
fitness for the place, was as a matter of course an efficient official. He 
was chairman of the Eepublican county committee for two or three years, 
and in 1908 was an unsuccessful candidate for the Eepublican nomina- 
tion for Senator, and in 1899 for the Assembly — unsuccessful perhaps 
because he would not employ the methods of solicitation and persuasion 
which usually win in such contests. In 1892 Mr. McClary had been one 
of the hardest workers in the movement to secure the building of the 
Adirondack and St. Lawrence Eailway, and displayed such ability in the 
negotiations with Dr. Webb, and in the preparation of agreements with 



Biographical Sketches 763 

him, that when the road had been built he was employed to look alter 
the local legal business of the company in settling deals for rights of 
way and in preparing and trying cases in court. Much of his time for 
more than twenty years was given to this work. Mr. McClarv was of 
unsullied character, held positive convictions on all questions that inter- 
ested him, was a pleasant and persuasive speaker, and never failed to 
give earnest and generous support according to his means and to the 
extent of his abilities to all meritorious local projects. He was a con- 
tributory organizer and stockholder in a number of local enterprises 
which were instituted more with the thought that they would benefit 
M alone than that they would put money in the pockets of their backers. 
He was for several years president of the board of trustees of the State 
tuberculosis hospital at Ray Brook, a trustee of the Farrar Home for 
Deserving Old Ladies, president of the village board of education, and 
a zealous and working director of the Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital 
Association. He died October 13, 1915. 

Robert M. Moore, born at Morristown, Ont., July 3, 1867, removed 
with his parents in his youth to Jefferson county. His first experience 
in practical life was at a blacksmith's forge, and it was perhaps his first 
exhibition of the natural cleverness and acumen that has since so often 
been evidenced when, after two years, he quit the drudgery and hard 
work of that occupation upon the conviction that a much better living 
could be made more easily, and began the study of law — gaining 
admission to the bar in 1890. Mr. Moore located in Malone in 1889, 
and after ten years of practice and of conspicuous participation in poli- 
tics here removed to New York city in 1900. His strong points, addi- 
tional to unfailing good nature, are a remarkably retentive memory, so 
that any principle of law or court decision once read continues always 
at instant command, and a persistence in court in pursuing with reso- 
lute refusal to be diverted from it the one line of attack or defense 
mapped out by him in advance. Though not without his triumphs in 
civil actions, Mr. Moore's reputation rests largely upon his conduct of 
criminal cases. Besides the many successes won by him in Malone, he 
has been connected with a number of important murder trials in New 
York city — notably the Dr. Kennedy and the Patrick trials — which 
he conducted with ability and marked distinction. For a number of 
years both while practicing in Malone and after his removal to New 
York, he had practically a monopoly of the rich business incident to 
representing Chinamen who had been apprehended under the Chinese 
exclusion act, and realized tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars 



764 History of Franklin County 

from it. While spending most of his time in New York, Mr. Moore 
continues to identify himself with Malone through a law partnership 
with Andrew B. Cooney. 

Daniel Harwood Martin, son of the late William Martin and stepson 
of Dr. Watson H. Harwood, was born at Chasm Falls May 5, 1871, and 
was educated at Franklin Academy, Potsdam Normal School, Oberlin 
College and Drew Theological Seminary. But years before he attended 
the latter institution, and even before he attained his majority, he had 
engaged in preaching, and had served as pastor of the Wesleyan Metho- 
dist Church of Vermontville, in the church at Paul Smiths, and else- 
where, with a zeal and ability foreshadowing the larger and better work 
that he has since achieved. After having filled a number of assignments 
in New York, Maryland and Virginia he was called to a church in 
Washington, D. C, where he is still located, and preaching with an 
ability not only pleasing to his parishioners, but commanding attention 
elsewhere. St. John's College of Annapolis, Md., conferred upon him 
the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1909. Dr. Martin is a frequent 
contributor of articles on social welfare and patriotic questions to the 
Washington papers, and is an indefatigable worker. 

Maurice D. O'Connell, born in Constable April 23, 1839, was a 
student at Franklin Academy with William D. Brennan, Edward IT. 
Hobbs, Birney B. Keeler, Eugene Wilbur, Patrick G. Duffy and other 
well known men of that generation, and then taught school in Clinton, 
Franklin and St. Lawrence counties. During the civil war he was a 
chief of division in the office of the comptroller of the currency at Wash- 
ington, D. C, where he studied law, and was admitted as an attorney in 
1866. In 1869 he located at Fort Dodge, Iowa, and practiced law there 
until 1897. From 1872 to 1879 he was district attorney for a district 
which embraced eight counties ; was appointed by President Arthur 
United States attorney for the northern district of Iowa, but resigned 
for political reasons when President Cleveland was elected ; again held 
the office under President Harrison; and in 1897 was appointed by 
President McKinley to be solicitor of the treasury, and so continued 
until 1910, when he resigned to take a trip around the world — visiting 
the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippines, China and Japan. Mr. O'Connell 
then lived for two years at San Diego, Calif., and now makes Washing- 
ton his home. He is rated a very able lawyer, and evidently has 
prospered. 



Biographical Sketches I 765 

Edmund O'Connell, a brother of Maurice, was born in Constable 
November 20, 1848; was graduated from Franklin Academy in L871; 
and a couple of years afterward removed to Bloomington, II!., where be 
studied law, was admitted to tbe bar, and has since practiced the pro- 
fession. It was at Bloomington that the Republican party in Illi- 
nois had its birth in 1856 at a meeting which was addressed by Abra- 
ham Lincoln in his famous "Lost Speech" (lost because not reported), 
but which those who heard it remembered throughout their lives as a 
magnificent effort, and which, in appealing to his hearers to join the 
Republican standard, he closed with — 

" Come as the winds come, when forests are rended ; 
Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded." 

In such an environment, and with his associations strongly Republican 
it was altogether natural that Mr. O'Connell should become a Republican 
notwithstanding his antecedents were all Democratic. Mr. O'Connell 
was for four years an alderman of Bloomington, eight years prosecuting 
attorney for his county, and for four years a member of the Legislature. 
At present he holds a quasi-judicial position with the public utilities 
commission of Illinois, enjoys a large private practice, and stands high 
as a citizen. 

John G. O'Connell, brother of Maurice and Edmund, has been a resi- 
dent of Tecumseh, Neb., for more than forty years, and has served 
several terms as county judge, and also in both Houses of the Legislature. 

Richard S., another brother, and also a graduate of Franklin Acad- 
emy in 1871, located at Cato, Wis., and became a physician. He died in 
190G. 

George, the youngest brother, prospered in railroading in Wisconsin 
and then as a manufacturer of wood pulp. He lives now in Los Angeles, 
Calif. 

William T. O'Neil, born in Brighton February 7, 1850, studied law 
with Smith M. Weed at Plattsburgh, but considerations of health pre- 
vented him from completing his course and from engaging in practice. 
He located at St. Regis Falls in 1878, and was soon conspicuously iden- 
tified with business interests there — becoming a merchant, building and 
conducting a hotel, and prosecuting lumbering enterprises. Later he 
was farmer, operator of creameries, manufacturer of chairs, and organ- 
izer with others of an electric light company, a water-works company, 



766 History of Franklin County 

and a national bank. Between times financial misfortunes befell him, 
but he recovered eventually, paid every dollar of his debts in full, and 
at his death possessed a comfortable competence. Mr. O'Neil early 
became a power in local politics, served his town frequently as supervisor, 
and was in the Assembly for four years from 1883. During this period 
he had the reputation of being the best informed man in that body on 
pending measures generally, and was Theodore Eoosevelt's principal 
aide and counselor, and the regulator of the latter's impetuosity. In 
3 884 the younger element in the Republican party made a contest for 
control of the State convention to choose delegates to the national con- 
vention, and won. It was commonly regarded as due to Mr. O'Neil's 
generalship that success was achieved. In 1902 Mr. O'jSTeil was a can- 
didate for the Eepublican nomination for Congress, and, though almost 
every active and influential Eepublican in the county was for his oppo- 
nent, he almost pulled through single handed, as a change of very few 
votes in the caucuses in certain towns would have given him the majority 
of delegates. In 1906 he was elected to the State Senate, at once taking 
high rank in that body, and was re-elected in 1908. His health began 
to fail in the latter year by reason, as he himself believed, of the change 
from an active, stirring outdoor life to the more luxurious and con- 
fining habits prevalent at Albany; and, adhering to his work when he 
ought to have been at home or in an institution, died during the third 
session of his service. Mr. O'Neil was strong with the people 'as a can- 
vasser, straightforward and upright in all of his personal and public 
life, and well balanced. He did his own thinking, worked out problems 
for himself, and acted upon conscientious judgment. He died May 5, 
1909. 

Ashbel Parmelee, D. D., born at Stockbridge, Mass., October 18, 
1784, moved to Vermont with his parents at an early age, and until 
1802 did such work on the farm as would be expected from a boy poorly 
circumstanced. Having resolved to become a minister, he set about in 
earnest to acquire an education, but was so handicapped by eye trouble 
ihat for two years he could pursue his studies only by having fellow 
students read them to him. Thus it was not until 1808 that he was 
licensed to preach. Serving churches in Vermont for the next year or 
so, he came to Malone in 1809 to marry Lucy Winchester, a great-aunt 
of Mrs. Henry J. Merriam, which visit opened the way to his settlement 
at Malone in the latter part of the same year, to become pastor of the 
Congregational Church. His compensation was to be $400 a year, pay- 
able one-third in money and two-thirds in grain; and it never exceeded 



Biographical Sketches 767 

$650 per annum. The relation thus begun continued without a break 
for nearly thirty-six years, and fellowship with the society for sixteen 
years longer. During this latter period Doctor Parmelee preached in 
Bangor, Bellmont and other nearby places, as well as not infrequently 
m his old church, and for three years was prison chaplain at Danne- 
mora. The weakness and infirmities that afflicted him in his young man- 
hood disappeared within a few years, and, though of slight physique and 
apparently frail, he developed a capacity for great endurance and remark- 
able mental effort. He was all energized force, with untiring application, 
and his labors were prodigious. Besides his immediate pastoral work, he 
often gave two lectures or sermons a week in school houses in rural 
neighborhoods, and, taking a vacation, would travel on horseback and 
engage in missionary work for weeks at a time in St. Lawrence, Jeffer- 
son, Clinton and Essex counties. During the war of 1812 he acted as 
chaplain without pay in General Wilkinson's army. With it all, he 
built his church into a strong body, and himself into a dominating 
figure in the community. With an intellectual endowment of the highest 
order, and a strength and tenacity of conviction that no personal or 
public pressure could weaken or cause to waver, with inflexible standards 
of right and wrong, and with rigid conception of obligations of civic 
duty and even of the proprieties of individual walk and conduct, he so 
impressed upon the people generally, outside of his own church almost 
equally as within it, that whether or not men bore themselves as he 
believed and taught that they ought, they at least judged their friends 
and neighbors by test of whether they observed or disregarded Doctor 
Parmelee's dicta. Men of his time who had ample opportunity for 
observation and capacity for judgment were all agreed, even those of 
them who were not of his religious faith, that no man in Malone was 
ever so much of a factor in moulding the character of the community, 
or contributed so much to make the town what the best thought and 
the finest aspirations wished it to be. Of course his theology was of 
the type that is now commonly regarded as narrow and intolerant, but 
it was sincere and compelling to him, and was softened to others by a 
personal kindness and helpfulness that counted greatly. In a biography 
by his son 1 find the following: " He feared his Maker; he feared nothing 
else. Whenever he discovered a schism or heresy arising in his church, 
or an evil gaining root in the community, he put his foot boldly upon it. 
And he never took it up until the viper was crushed. It was a hard 
foot to get out of the way." Doctor Parmelee often expressed the hope 
that his end might come without warning, and his wish was gratified. 
May 24, 1862, when in apparently better health than he had enjoyed for 



768 History of Franklin County 

a number of weeks, and while in the very act of performing a neigh- 
borly service, he fell into the arms of his friend and expired. Former 
Vice-President Wheeler so appraised his work and venerated his charac- 
ter that on a memorial tablet which he erected he caused it to be 
inscribed that he was " instantaneously translated/' 

Ashbel B. Parmelee, born in Malone October 14, 1816, was a life- 
long resident except for six or seven years, and was one of the strongest, 
must useful and most exemplary citizens that the town ever had. He 
taught school in the western part of the State and at Kingston for two 
or three years, beginning in 1835, and also studied law while so engaged. 
After admission to the bar he practiced in Illinois for a time — return- 
ing to Malone in 1842. Here also he practiced until 18G5, though not 
very actively from 1854 because engaged for eleven years following that 
date as State canal appraiser. It was at a time when graft in this work 
had been scandalous, and Mr. Parmelee's service purified conditions 
notably. From 1850 to 1854 he was district attorney of Franklin county, 
and during Colonel Seaver's absence in the army for two years during 
the civil war was in editorial charge of the Palladium. In 1S65 he 
located in New York city for a year or two in the practice of his pro- 
fession, and, then returning to Malone, became a partner with James H. 
Titus in the land and lumber business, which passed subsequently to 
the sole ownership of himself and his son, Morton S. Beside's the bene- 
fits that Malone as a whole derived from the prosecution of his large 
industrial interests, scores of those holding lands under contract with 
him enjoyed in a measure known only to themselves forbearance and 
bounty at his hands which saved them from serious losses, if not from 
actual ruin. Of strong convictions, intelligent to a degree, upright in 
every walk of life, Mr. Parmelee commanded wide and profound respect; 
and, though far from what is known as a "good mixer," was of warm 
sociability in the circle of his immediate friends, and had a deep and 
abiding interest in everything that looked to the welfare of the com- 
munity. He was for many years president of the village board of educa- 
tion and of Morningside Cemetery Association — giving unstintedly of 
his time and abilities to the duties of the positions. Mr. Parmelee died 
of paralysis, following a surgical operation, August 17, 1886. 

Morton S. Parmelee, born in Malone March 2, 1850, possessed the 
abilities and many of the characteristics which were to be expected from 
his lineage, as grandson of the most intellectual divine who ever 
served in Northern New York, and as the son of Hon. Ashbel B. Par- 



Biographical Sketches 769 

melee, one of the strongest lawyers and most capable men in the county. 
Mr. Parmelee's early intention, to enter the profession of the law, was 
abandoned while he was yet in his youth by reason of the conviction 
that his father needed his assistance in the large business enterprise 
which he had undertaken. Upon that consideration he gave up his 
college course, and in 1868 identified himself with the land and lumber 
business of Titus & Parmelee — afterward that of A. B. Parmelee & 
Son. He combined the qualities, rarely found in one individual, of the 
student and book-lover with a keen and broad grasp of business and 
public problems, so that to a refined appreciation of the arts and wide 
literary attainments he joined particular aptitude for the every-day, 
practical transactions of life. In the church he was a valued counselor 
and a strong supporter, and a foremost figure in nearly every enterprise 
that looked to the betterment of village, town or county conditions. In 
particular, Mr. Parmelee was active and helpful in giving Malone an 
improved water supply, in making Morningside Cemetery beautiful, in 
organizing and managing the Northern New York Institution for Deaf 
Mutes, in creating our present fire department system, in fostering the 
public schools, and notably in the movement which brought to the connty 
a new railway, reaching to Montreal on the north and to the New York 
Central System on the south. No man was more interested in political 
affairs in a wholly unselfish way, and though he could never be induced 
himself to stand for office he was always a generous giver to campaign 
funds, and responded cheerfully to demands to address public meetings. 
As a speaker his efforts had a fine finish, and his delivery was magnetic 
and dramatic — thrilling and captivating his audiences. Mr. Par- 
melee's charities were many and large, but so studiously concealed that 
few besides the recipients were even aware of them. He died July 24, 
1897. 

Jabez Parkhurst, born in Sharon, Vt., October 24, 1 7 S r> , was grad- 
uated from the University of Vermont in 1810, and, having been admitted 
to the bar in 1814, located soon afterward at Fort Covington. He was 
for a time a teacher in the old Harison Academy at Malone. A virile, 
positive character, and well grounded in the law. he made his mark as 
a practitioner and in all of his relations as a citizen. He was an 
extremist in almost everything, and was elected to the Assembly in 1833 
and 1834 as an anti-Mason, and was the unsuccessful candidate of the 
Liberty party for the same office in 1841. He was a militant abolitionist, 
and often harbored runaway slaves at his home. He died October 31, 
1865. 

25 



770 History of Franklin County 

Henry A. Paddock, born in Tort Covington May 2, 1823, was 
admitted to the bar in 1848, and was elected district attorney as a Demo- 
crat in 1853. Casting in his lot with the Republican party in 1855, of 
course a re-election was out of the question, but in 1859 he was chosen 
county judge, and held the office until 1868. During his incumbency 
he removed to M alone, and after the expiration of his term practiced 
his profession, and, forty-odd years ago, operated extensively in a general 
business way. He became the owner of a large flouring mill just north of 
the village, was interested in saw mills, and bought and sold real estate 
on a large scale. Among other ventures, he engaged in selling his 
indorsement on notes to those who were ready to pay handsomely for 
enjoyment of his credit, which, however, availed creditors but little, as 
nothing was collectible when obligors failed and debts matured. Mr. 
Paddock was a national bank examiner from 1875 to 1879, and a good 
one. Of keen mentality, well read in the law, possessing a broad and 
eager business sense, and aggressive, almost to belligerency, in any con- 
test that aroused his interest, Mr. Paddock occupied for a long time 
a large place in the public eye, and was a force in all local affairs. He 
died January 4, 1884. 

Frederick G. Paddock, born at Fort Covington April 15, 1859, 
removed to Malone with his parents in 1866, and has since resided there 
eontinluously. He was graduated from the Columbia Law School in 
New York city in 1884, and was admitted to the bar the same year. He 
was elected district attorney in 1892, continuing in the office for six 
years, was president of the village of Malone in 1903, and was elected 
county judge and surrogate in 1907, and re-elected in 1913. Judge 
Paddock has been active in Republican politics, has evinced a strong 
interest in public questions from his early manhood, and has been par- 
ticularly active and useful in the work of promoting better highways 
and in all social service problems. 

James S. Phillips was born in Westville July 12, 1824, studied 
medicine and practiced the profession there from 1855 to 1859, and then 
located at Malone. Of quiet tastes and habits, he mingled little in a 
conspicuous way in politics or public affairs, though always interested 
in every worthy enterprise, and mindful of the duties of good citizenship. 
He enjoyed a large practice, and also gave considerable attention to hop 
farming. He died June 16, 1890. 

William W. Paddock was born in Malone March 19, 1825, and 
always made his home in the county. He was a collegiate, and his 



Biographical Sketches 771 

private life was blameless. For many years he was a member of the 
board of education of the village school district of Malone. Be was 
elected county clerk as a Republican, and served for two terms. In L872 
he became a Liberal Republican, and because he used the machinery and 
influence of his office against the party which had given him the posi- 
tion, partisan bitterness against him was pronounced. He was, however 
unquestionably conscientious in the matter. As the 'candidate of the 
Democrats and Liberal Republicans for re-election in L873, he was 
overwhelmingly defeated. He died May 17, 1888. 

John R. Primrose, of whom my first knowledge was that he was 
a resident of Brooklyn, began coming to Malone as a buyer of hops for 
S. & F. Uhlman about 1870, and was thereafter an annual visitor here 
until 1886, when he located as a resident, to take the management of 
the large hop farms then owned by the Uhlmans. He at once took an 
active part in local Democratic politics, and from his city experience 
taught the home contingent many points. He was elected village [(resi- 
dent. He died July 10, 1890. 

Charles H. Palmer was born in Malone in 1831, and died April 30, 
1891. He followed the business of farming, but was best known as a 
teacher, having taught school in many districts in the county, and also 
conducted old-fashioned singing schools all through this northern sec- 
tion. Of upright character, even tempered and social inclinations, he 
enjoyed a wide acquaintance, and was generally liked and esteemed. 

Albert M. Phelps, born at Alburgh, Vt., in 1851, located in Burke 
in 1873 for the practice of medicine, removed to Ohateaugay in 1876, 
and established himself in New York city in 1887. Dr. Phelps bad 
an interesting personality, engaging and animated in conversation, over- 
flowing with energy and buoyancy of spirit, and delighting in associa- 
tion with his friends. His animadversions upon medicine as a science 
were sweeping and extreme. He professed a contempt for it, and 
insisted that practice under it was practically altogether guesswork — 
guessing, first, what might be the ailment of a patient, and, next, guess- 
ing what and how much of a drug should be given for its relief. But 
for surgery he had a great respect and love, and became one of the 
world's most brilliant and skillful operators. For a time the older 
practitioners in the county distrusted his counsels, questioned if there 
could be safety in the then almost or quite untried operations which 
he proposed, and even wondered if his delight in using the knife did 



772 History of Franklin County 

not at times affect his judgment as to the necessity or advisability of 
applying it. But the exceptional skill which he developed, his sureness 
in finding and following the right course, and the marvelous cures that 
he wrought in cases of deformity won for him within a few years a 
standing in the profession which was outranked by but few in the world. 
The man who, hardly more than a boy, had been doubted by his elders 
became a lecturer in the medical department of the University of Ver- 
mont, was consulted and employed by the most eminent practitioners 
in the metropolis, stood among the foremost in the faculties of great 
institutions, and was even called by universities in Germany to lecture 
and demonstrate before their professors and students. He died October 
10, 1902. 

Benjamin Raymond was born in Ackworth. N. H., in 1798. He 
married Jane Latham Conant, a direct descendant of Roger Conant on 
one side, and on the other of Mary Chilton, who was the first woman 
1hat set foot on Plymouth Rock. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond moved to Fort 
Covington about 1820. Mr. Raymond was a millwright, and built many 
mills in the northern part of the county — afterward engaging in mer- 
cantile business with remarkable success, having been one of the two 
merchants at French Mills in early days who did not fail. In 1855 he 
removed to Malone, and, probably more than any other one man, initiated 
and carried through the project of giving the village a gravity system 
of water-works. He was also the father of the creation of the cemetery 
that is now known as Morningside, and gave to the undertaking and its 
development a degree of unrewarded attention and care that makes the 
present generation debtor to him in no small measure. Few men were 
more useful in a public way, possessed sounder practical judgment, dis- 
played a larger public spirit, or commanded more of general confidence 
and respect. He died in Malone November 17, 1870. 

Thomas Richey was born in Malone in 1812, and in 1814 was 
licensed by the Methodist Episcopal conference to preach. He served 
many parishes in Franklin count}' and elsewhere in Northern New York, 
and was superannuated in 1889. He died at Watertown July 10, 1892. 

Orson L. Reynolds, who was born in Bombay in 1829, removed to 
Bangor, and then to Brandon, where he was the founder of the large 
lumbering business which has been prosecuted since his death by his 
sons under the style of Reynolds Brothers. Mr. Reynolds was supervisor 
of Brandon for a number of years, and the board had no more attentive 
or shrewder member. He died April 8, 1888. 



Biographical, Sketches 773 

Matt C. Ransom (whose name is not Matt at all, but Madison) was 
born at Mooers January 23, 1858, and located at Fort Covington as a 
lawyer in 1883. Studious, industrious, self-reliant and endowed with 
a good mind, he quickly gained an enviable standing in his profession, 
and though the field was not one to afford many large opportunities he 
nevertheless had a considerable number of important cases, and his work 
in them attracted favorable attention. In those days he was active in 
politics, and a number of times was the Democratic candidate for county 
office. In 1896, when the Farmers National Bank of Malone had 
deposits of only $395,000 and a surplus of only $10,000', Mr. Ransom 
was offered the vice-presidency and practically the general management 
of the institution. Accepting, he came to Malone, and ever since has 
given his time and energies almost exclusively to the business of bank- 
ing, and with such success that the bank now has deposits of about 
$785,000 and a surplus of $225,000. It has the remarkable record of 
never having passed a dividend in over fifty years. Mr. Ransom is one 
of the board of managers of the St. Lawence Hospital for the Insane, 
and a trustee of the Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital and of the Northern 
New York Institution for Deaf Mutes. He is also a director of The 
Lawrence-Webster Company. 

George M. Sabin, born at Guildhall, Vt., in 1805, came to Malone 
in 1834. He was a lumberman and farmer, and became a major in the 
old militia. He died July 31, 1890. 

Eli B. Smith was born in Chateaugay August 11, 1806, and made 
that place his home for about sixty years, when he removed to Malone. 
Though always leading a quiet life, and apparently caring for little that 
was not of a business nature, he yet had a very strong interest in public 
matters. He gave the site for the Chateaugay high school, a lot for an 
engine house in Chateaugay, the organ to the Chateaugay Presbyterian 
church, a considerable collection of books to the Wead Library in Malone, 
and the chimes to the Congregational church of Malone. He died 
January 15, 1890. 

Henry B. Smith, son of Colonel Thomas Smith of 1812 war fame, 
was born in Chateaugay January 5, 1805, and in his youth worked on 
a farm and in his father's tavern. As soon as he was old enough to 
assume responsibilities himself he became a merchant, and, generally 
expanding his activities, engaged in large real estate and lumbering 
operations, so that after a time he dominated most enterprises in both 



774 History of Franklin County 

Chateaugay and Burke. First and last, he served his town as super- 
visor for a dozen years, and held also every other town office that he 
would consent to accept. He was the Democratic leader and autocrat 
in all the eastern part of the county for a long time, became judge of 
the court of common pleas in 1833, its first judge ten years later, State 
Senator in 1852-3, was deputy collector of customs at Chateaugay for 
a number of years, and for nearly a decade was collector of the district 
of Champlain — the only Franklin county man who ever held that office. 
In a business way, in politics and in mentality Mr. Smith was one of 
the biggest men that the county ever had in his time, though it is found 
in his record that as a member of a special committee of the board of 
supervisors he recommended about 1850 a sale of the site of the existing 
county buildings, which, as it has turned out, would have been a wise 
procedure, and the erection of new structures on the Arsenal Green, 
which would have been an unfortunate encroachment on the park, and 
also in disregard of the restrictions contained in the deed of conveyance 
of the property of the State. Mr. Smith accumulated a probably larger 
property than any one else in the county had ever possessed up to that 
lime. He died August 22, 1863. 

Edmund F. Sargent, born at Brattleboro, Vt., April 18, 1815, 
located at Bangor as a boy. He became a farmer, and was interested 
largely in the manufacture of starch. He served the town as supervisor, 
and was a member of Assembly in 1868-9. Of sound judgment and 
upright life, he was respected and popular. He died November 9, 1889. 

Sherman Stancliff, born at Shoreham, Vt., August 28, 1817, came 
to Malone in 1833. For many years whenever the town had a particu. 1 - 
larly ugly piece of road making or repairing, or any individual wanted 
a dam built on honor, or a lumber job put through with a rush, Mr. 
Stancliff was always looked to to take the contract. He invariably did 
the work as it ought to be done, regardless of the agreed price, and more 
often than not he worked at a loss. Upon one occasion, in the time when 
churches in all of the country districts were open for political meetings, 
the writer had a speaking appointment with the late John I. Gilbert at 
Chasm Falls, and Mr. Stancliff acted as chairman of the meeting. His 
politics and his religion were vital things to him, and he believed in 
one as devoutly as in the other. Thus when the speaking was over, 
he announced that the meeting would close with the singing of the 
Doxology! Simple, straightforward and conscientious, everybody liked 
and respected Sherman Stancliff. He died May 3, 1892. 



Biographical Sketches 775 

S. Dwight Stevens (father of Halbert D. of the Malone Fanner), 
born at Whittingham, Yt, in 1818, settled in Bangor, and then in 
Moira, where he remained until 1875. Mr. Stevens was one of the 
founders of the Republican party in the latter town, but in no sense as 
a politician. He believed in the new organization as he believed in 
Christianity, and for much the same reasons. Though without train- 
ing as a public speaker, he espoused Republicanism and expounded ita 
principles in every school house in Moira. In 1875 he removed to Malone, 
and engaged in merchandising for a few years. He was a man of intelli- 
gent and conscientious convictions, self-poised, and highly respected. 
He died November 24, 1899. 

Baker Stevens, born in Canada in 1827, came to Moira as a young 
man, and engaged in farming work in summer and teaching school in 
winter. From 1849 to 1S52 or a little later the California fever raged 
here very much as Colorado attracted so many people twenty-odd years 
afterward, and Mr. Stevens was one of a. party of eighteen young men 
from the western part of the comity who was stricken by it, and adven- 
tured the trip in 1852, making the voyage " around the Horn," and being 
152 days from New York to San Francisco. While Mr. Stevens's seanh 
for gold w r as moderately successful, more than once he missed "striking it 
rich " by the merest chance, as, for illustration, he dug one day at the 
foot of a tree, choosing a spot that was in the shade, and found but 
little gold. Had he worked where the sun was heating down, on the 
opposite side of the tree, he would have realized a rich fortune, which 
a worker there a day or so later unearthed. Mr. Stevens returned from 
California in 1855, and engaged in merchandising at Moira, and after- 
ward at North Bangor and Malone, but for the final forty-odd years 
of his life was without confining or active occupation. He was always 
greatly interested in educational affairs, and for many years was a valued 
member of the board of education of the village school district of Malone, 
Though never particularly active in politics, he was many times (usually 
unwillingly) the Democratic nominee for important local offices, and was 
invariably deeply interested for good government and in public policies 
generally. Of broad intelligence, spotless character, and delighting in 
discussion of abstract questions, Mr. Stevens was highly regarded, and 
enjoyed a marked degree of public confidence. He died January 2, 
1917. 

William Cullen Stevens, born in Moira August 29, I s is, began 
business life as a clerk at that place, but soon afterward engaged as 



\ 



776 History of Franklin County 

a traveling salesman with a wagon for a notions house, and then became 
a commercial traveler for a large Boston wholesale firm. In 1874 he 
engaged in merchandising in Malone as a member of a hardware firm, 
and later in dry goods. From his earliest manhood Mr. Stevens was 
intensely interested in politics, and became a party worker. He was 
elected to the Assembly in 1888, and re-elected in 1889 and 1890 — 
succeeding well in the duties of the office, particularly in forwarding 
local measures. It was during his service that the first appropriation 
for the Northern New York Institution for Deaf Mutes was secured. 
For a number of years following his service as Assemblyman he was 
the financial clerk of the Assembly, and traveled between sessions as a 
salesman for The Lawrence-Webster Company of Malone. Mr. Stevens 
was genial and companionable, and made friends readily. He died 
suddenly the night of October 2, 1897, after a day of unusual activity, 
and during which he had been chosen chairman of the Eepublican county 
committee — a position to which he had long aspired. Mrs. Stevens 
awoke in the morning and found him dead. 

Edward L. Stevens, born in Malone May 20, 1867, engaged in teach- 
ing after completing his academic and collegiate course of studies — his 
first important work in this line having been as principal of the Chateau- 
gay high school, and then in a similar capacity at Catskill. From the 
latter place he went to a professorship in the normal school at Jamaica, 
and from there was appointed one of the superintendents of schools for 
the city of New York, with assignment for service in the borough of 
Queens, where he was credited with having brought "order out of 
chaos " in his territory. Upon a later reorganization of the educational 
system of the city, Mr. Stevens was transferred to the borough of Man- 
hattan, and for several years was second in rank in charge of the super- 
intendence of the city's schools. He was an indefatigable worker of 
fine executive powers, and was fully abreast of the best educational 
ideas and methods. At the time of his death he was engaged in the 
preparation of a history of the State of New York which was to be 
particularly adapted to school uses. Mr. Stevens died April 3, 1914. 

Calvin Skinner, born in Eoyalton, Vt., May 29, 1818, located in 
Malone in 1842 for the practice of his profession as a phvsician. "With 
a cheery manner, a symnathetic temperament, a skill to alleviate suffer- 
ing, and an energy, courage and character that made him a high-class 
citizen, Dr. Skinner became one of the best known and most highly 
regarded residents of the county. In addition to his active professional 



Biographical, Sketches 



i a 



work, covering a period of mure than forty years, he was conspicuous 
in politics and in forwarding local public undertakings. He was one 
of eleven men to organize the Republican party in Franklin county in 
1855, was a delegate to the national convention that nominated Abra- 
ham Lincoln in I860, was always a worker in campaigns, and held the 
office of postmaster of Malone lor fourteen years. In 1862 he went to 
Virginia as a volunteer surgeon for a short time, and later became the 
regularly commissioned surgeon of the 106th regiment. Dr. Skinner 
was one of the incorporators of the Malone Water- Works Company in 
1857, was one of the founders and for years a trustee of the LNortnern 
New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes, and was identified from time to 
time with other home enterprises of value and importance to the town. 
For ten years preceding his death he was confined to his home by a 
spinal trouble traceable to his army service. He died September 24, 
1903 — almost, if not quite, the last of the generation next after the 
pioneers who did so much to give tone and character to Malone, and 
make it a town worth living in. 

William C. Skinner, son of Calvin Skinner, M. D., was born in 
Malone January 26, 1855, and after graduating at Franklin Academy 
entered Trinity College at Hartford, Conn., and completed the course 
there. He then studied law for a time, but, having made congenial and 
influential friends in Hartford, located in that city, and engaged in the 
wool business extensively. He was appointed aide on the staff of 
Governor Bulk ley, with the rank of colonel. A few years ago he acquired 
an interest in the Colts Arms Company, and became one of its principal 
officers. His various business enterprises have given him large wealth 
without indisposing him to be active and useful. He has an arclenl 
love for the Adirondacks, and owns a large private park on Deer river 
in the town of Duane, and another in the town of Brighton — the 
latter being the property known as McCollums. Upon the former he 
has spent a good many thousand dollars in erecting buildings and in 
developing a power plant lor lighting his camp and grounds by elec- 
tricity. Though having ceased to call Malone his home some forty years 
ago, he yet continues to have an active and affectionate interest in the 
town — being one of the owners of the Ballard clothing factory and 
mill, and having recently presented to St. Mark's Church a fine and 
commodious rectory, in the erection of which something like fifteen 
thousand dollars was expended, and having also built a nurses' home 
at a cost of twelve thousand dollars as a memorial to his lather and 



778 | History of Franklin County 

mother for the Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital. Colonel Skinner has 
an engaging personality, and is as popular socially as he is efficient in 
business. 

Joel J. Seaver, born at Salisbury, Vt., December 17, 1822, came to 
Bangor as a boy, and learned the tinsmith's trade with an uncle, James 
Bigelow. In 1842 he entered the Palladium, office as an apprentice, and 
in 1850 became one of the proprietors and editors of that publication — 
continuing his interest in it, at times actively and at other periods only 
as part proprietor and as advisor of its active managers, to the day of 
his death. He was the strongest editorial writer in this section of the 
State — virile, positive and trenchant. When Sumter was fired upon 
he was the first man in Franklin county to enlist, and left Malone in 
early May, 1861, as captain of a company which was mustered into 
service as a unit of the famous 16th regiment. He was promoted 
major, lieutenant-colonel and colonel, and at the expiration of his two 
years' term of service was offered a commission as brigadier-general. 
Colonel Seaver was a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1867, 
and was postmaster at Malone for four years from 1874. He was also 
for many years a member of the board of education of the village 
school district of Malone, and at one time its president. He died 
November 29, 1899. 

Daniel H. Stanton, born at Strafford, N. H., in November, 1830, 
came in 1846 to Bellmont, where his father had preceded him. He 
learned the printer's trade in Malone, and followed it until he entered 
the army as a member of the 98th regiment in 1861. He became 
adjutant, was severely wounded, and made a fine military record. After 
the war he was appointed deputy and then assessor of internal revenue 
taxes, and took up the study of surveying, in which profession he 
attained to a very high standing. He was county treasurer for six 
years from 1876, and also served Malone as supervisor. During his 
later years Mr. Stanton was probably the best authority in the county 
in regard to local military records, as he was also a mine of information 
concerning most county, town and village affairs and history. To 
exceptional natural abilities he added a remarkably retentive memory, 
and was a notably interesting companion and useful citizen. He died 
June 5, 1897. 

Patrick H. Shields, born in Ireland, July 17, 1831, came to this 
country in his youth, and to Malone in 1855 to enter the employ of the 



Biographical Sketches 771) 

old Northern Railroad under William A. Wheeler. Willing, energetic 
and clever, he was advanced from humble duties to more important 
positions, and, making his home in Mr. Wheeler's household, became the 
latter's agent and representative in many personal and political matters. 
During the civil war Mr. Shields recruited a company for the 106th 
regiment, and served for a time as its captain. Lie then engaged in the 
grocery business at Malone, and after a time became a buyer of hops 
for a New York firm, which failed, and involved him for a good many 
thousand dollars. A little later he became the Franklin county repre- 
sentative of S. & F. Uhlmann, and continued with them for twenty 
years or more. After the close of the war, when contests for county 
nominations were waged more in the modern way than had been the 
former practice, Mr. Shields still served Mr. Wheeler in transmitting 
his plans and wishes to lieutenants throughout the county, and by-and-by 
began to operate in the field independently. His old relations with M r. 
Wheeler were understood to continue long after the latter had discon- 
tinued employing him, and the severance of such relations not being 
generally known, Mr. Shields was able not infrequently to further his 
own schemes through the assumption of those with whom he had had 
earlier dealings that he still bore the Wheeler commission. He was the 
first man in Franklin county to " pack " a caucus, and by the procedure 
defeated Mr. Wheeler in his own town. He was thus a considerable 
political factor locally for a good many years. Mr. Shields was for a 
long time a deputy collector of customs, with only nominal duties, so 
that he had abundant leisure for political activity. His Republicanism 
was usually of the unswerving sort, and with two or three exceptions he 
accepted enthusiastically all convention results, whether they reflected 
his own preferences or not ; and as he used to say himself, " no man 
could flop quicker than " he. He was a big-hearted, generous Irishman, 
seldom showing vindictiveness, and was liked personally even by those 
who resemted and abhorred some of his methods. He died July 19, 
1899. 

Julius C. Saunders, born in Dickinson in 1833, was one of a con- 
siderable number from this county who caught the early California 
gold fever, and upon his return entered upon the study of the law, and 
became a practitioner in Malone. During the first Cleveland adminis- 
tration he was a special treasury agent, and was often the Democratic 
candidate for one or another county office. He died in Malone Novem- 
ber 12, 1896. 



780 History of Franklin County 

John M. Spann, born in Indianapolis, Inch, April 29, 1850, became 
identified with Malone by marriage with a daughter of Darius W. 
Lawrence. Mr. Spann made his home here from 1881 until 1892, 
engaging in the hardware business, and then in insurance. In 1892 
he returned to Indianapolis, to join with his father and brother in 
insurance and real estate operations, and became so prominent in that 
city because of his likeable qualities and wise judgment that there were 
Lew improvements or enterprises of a general character with which he 
did not have some connection. He was secretary of a large insurance 
corporation, president of the Institution for Feeble-Minded Children 
at Fort Wayne, and president of the Commercial Club: and in all 
matters commanded the entire respect and trust of the community. 
Of gentle courtesy, of the most equable temper of any one that the 
writer ever knew, of never-failing cheerfulness, and of agreeable accom- 
modation to the wishes of others in non-essentials, but with a resolute 
will and unyielding attitude in matters involving principle, Mr. Spann 
was thoroughly a manly man, and easily won and surely held the 
affectionate regard of everybody with whom he had relations. As he 
turned from the railway ticket office in Indianapolis, after buying a 
ticket for visiting the institution at Fort Wayne of which he was presi- 
dent, he fell unconscious, and soon expired, on February 5, 1902. 

Fred D. Shepard, born in Ellenburgh, September 11, 1*855, came 
to Malone from Chateaugay in his youth with his parents, and after grad- 
uation from Franklin Academy studied medicine at Ann Arbor, Mich. 
In 1882 he went to Asia Minor as a medical missionary, and was at once 
given charge of the development and administration of the medical 
department of the Central Turkey College at Aintab, which had been 
established six years earlier, and to which a hospital was added in 1884. 
For thirty-three years Dr. Shepard continued in his work with no 
furlough except one of a twelvemonth which he passed in the United 
States in improving himself in modern surgery. He fitted many 
Armenians to practice medicine intelligently and with efficiency; 
responded to almost constant insistent calls of the sick in all of the 
neighboring villages — always traveling on horseback, and averaging 
for long periods to ride three hundred miles or more per month ; inspired 
his fellow workers to continued effort; prescribed to hospital patients 
daily when not in the field; fought the plague; administered relief funds 
in feeding the starving, organizing industries and rebuilding homes 
after merciless massacres perpetrated upon Christians by the Turks; 
averaged to perform four hundred and fifty major surgical operations 



Biographical Sketches 781 

a year; gave himself heart and soul to impressing upon the native minds 
"what is meant by vital Christianity" and in founding and maintain- 
ing churches; and won for himself the profound respect, and in many 
cases the warm affection, of both Turks and Christians. Worn and 
weakened by the strain and work of almost a year's unintermittent 
labors in combatting an epidemic of typhus, he was himself stricken 
by the disease, and died at Aintab, December 18, 1915. 

John L. Southwick, born in Bombay April 24, 1858, was gradu- 
ated from Franklin Academy in 1878, and from Cornell University 
in 1883. He became a member of the editorial staff of the Burlington 
(Vt.) Free Press in 1884, and in 1890 was advanced to the position 
of editor-in-chief, in which he has done thoughtful and creditable work. 
Mr. Southwick has a fine and well-balanced mind, is a graceful and 
vigorous writer, and is controlled in all of his work by high principle. 
His editorial efforts have won for him an excellent standing with the 
people of Vermont generally, and he is a force for good in all matters 
affecting the State. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the 
Vermont free school fund; in 1912 was a delegate to the Republican 
national convention, and in 1916 a Presidential elector. 

Francis E. Sawyer was born in Malone in 1872, and as a boy was 
remarkably precocious, evincing a particular interest in music and liter- 
ary composition. After graduating at Franklin Academy, he went to 
]STew York to study music, and was quickly recognized as an exquisite 
pianist, and became a composer of stately oratorio measures and ballad 
music. He became the associate and coworker of eminent composers 
of far greater age, who deemed him a genius. Of frail physique, a 
high strung nervous temperament and a busy, never-sleepim: brain, 
he broke down, and died January 20, 1896. 

Samuel C. F. Thorndike, born in Malone October 1?, 1810, had as 
his first business adventure the delivery of the Franklin Telegraph to 
its subscribers in Malone, making the distribution on horseback, and 
calling people to their doors to receive the paper by ringing blasts on 
his post-horn. While still a boy he engaged in clerking for various 
mercantile firms in Fort Covington, Westville and Helena, with a brief 
venture in merchandising on bis own account in Fori Covington. Next 
be clerked in Troy, and, returning to Malone. was elected county clerk 
in 1849 by the Whigs, squeezing through by onrj two majority. In tin's 
period he became active in the old Stale militia, rising to the rank of 



782 History of Franklin County 

brigadier-general, and upon the conclusion of his term of office as county 
clerk entered the service of the 0. & L. C. P. P., with which he contin- 
ued for twenty years — for a part of the time as cashier and treas- 
urer. In his various clerical and accountant engagements he handled 
millions of dollars, and no account that he kept was ever even a penny 
out of balance, nor so confused but that it could be readily analyzed 
and understood. During the civil war Mr. Thorndike was provost 
marshal for St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, and was conspicu- 
ously efficient in filling quotas and conducting the drafts. In his later 
years he was a part of the time in trade in Malone, and otherwise led 
a retired life. He was a man of warm, quick impulses, of a grim humor, 
an ardent friend, of sterling honesty, and of marked independence of 
character. He died April 2, 1882. 

John L. Thorndike, son of Samuel C. F., was born in Malone Sep- 
tember 21, 1834, and when a young man went to California, where he 
became associated with Henry Meiggs, and accompanied him to South 
America. Having been Mr. Meiggs's right hand man in all of his 
mammoth enterprises in Peru, he succeeded upon the death of Mr. 
Meiggs, in 1878, to most of his interests, carried some of them through 
to completion, and undertook big mining and construction works for 
himself. In connection with another American he was rated in 1888 
as owning a hundred million dollars' worth of mining concessions and 
railroad properties in Peru and Chile, a large part of which the govern- 
ments confiscated, though Mr. Thorndike subsequently recovered some 
parts of the properties, and saved a considerable fortune out of the 
wreck. He died at Lima October 12, 1901. 

Hiram H. Thompson, born in Malone March 16, 1822, was for 
many years a leading business man and citizen. In 1846, when hardly any 
money was in circulation, and trading was almost altogether upon a credit 
basis, Mr. Thompson and Edwin L. Meigs opened a store, and conducted 
it for years upon the ready-pay principle. No one was permitted to 
open an account, and all goods had to be paid for on the spot either in 
cash or produce. The venture, never before tried in the county, was 
deemed by older dealers to lie recklessly foolish and certain to fail ; but it 
proved a pronounced success, and gave to the partners the beginning 
of the fortunes which each accumulated. After a few years Mr. Thomp- 
son retired from mercantile pursuits, and engaged in farming, buying 
the Hardy place, and erecting the brick house still standing there. 
Later he became a tanner, again a merchant, and a large manufacturer 



Biographical Sketches 783 

of starch. As a tanner he was burned out three times. Before the 
civil war he established a hardware business, which is still continued 
under the name and title of H. D. Thompson & Co., and which has 
always had a large trade. Mr. Thompson's only experience in public 
office was as a deputy collector of internal revenue, and he used to sa\ 
that from a financial standpoint he made a mistake in accepting the 
appointment. Though in manner and temperament not adapted to 
political management, he yet had a considerable part in determining 
local policies and action by reason of trenchant expression of his views 
to his particular friends and associates, who, impressed by the sound- 
ness of his judgment, saw to adoption of his counsel by conventions 
and the political organization. Mr. Thompson was public spirited, 
intelligent, conscientious and virile. At times direct to brusqueness and 
positive almost to severity, he was nevertheless sympathetic and kind of 
heart, and attached himself strongly to the circle of his immediate 
friends. He died August 18, 1900. 

Horace A. Taylor, born at Morristown, New York, August 8, 1824, 
came to Bangor with his parents in 1828; and studied law and was 
admitted to the bar in Malone. In 1862 and again in 18(i:. lie was 
elected district attorney, and served as county judge from 1878 to 
1890. For a number of years he was interested in the manufacture 
of starch, and for a time had a part in the experiment in Bangor 
of making tanning extract from bark. His business enterprises were 
not successful, however. As a practitioner he was neither energetic nor 
aggressive, but was generally regarded as a safe adviser and a fairly 
good judge of law. He died March 29, 1893. 

Chandler Newell Thomas, born in Bangor July 8, 1834, prepared 
for college at Franklin Academy, graduated at Middlebury College in 
1861, taught in Castleton (Vt.) Seminary in 18G1 and 1862, ami in 
the latter year entered Auburn Theological Seminary, where he gradu- 
ated in 1865. In the same year he became pastor of the Presbyterian 
church at Fort Covington, and continued in that relation for seventeen 
years. Mr. Thomas had a fine bass voice, highly cultivated, ami while 
a student at Middlebury became a member of a glee club which toured 
Vermont and Northern New York, giving very popular entertainments; 
and while at Fort Covington he taught singing schools ami organized 
and conducted local musical conventions. He was active also in support 
of the old Northern New York Musical Association, participating inter- 
estedly and helpfully in its affairs until the organization went out of 



784 History of Franklin County 

existence — an unfortunate and deplorable culmination, due to jealousy 
between its Potsdam and Malone members. Upon the conclusion of 
Mr. Thomas's pastorate at Fort Covington he removed to Port Henry, 
where he served the church at that place for eight years. He was located 
afterward at New Haven, Vt., at Bristol, Vt., and at Castle Rock, Col- 
orado, where he died February 2, 19 OS. Mr. Thomas was a trustee of 
Middlebury College from 1889 to 1908, and a director of the Vermont 
Domestic Missionary Society in 1898. He was a devout man, a faithful 
minister, gratefully remembered for good works in every community to 
which he ministered. 

John M. Thomas, D. D., LL.D., son of Rev. Chandler N". Thomas, 
born at Fort Coving-ton December 27, 1869, prepared for college at 
Franklin Academy; was graduated from Middlebury College in 1890; 
entered Union Theological Seminary the same year — graduating in 
1893. He took a postgraduate course for two years. He was a stu- 
dent in the University of Marburg, Germany, in 1903. He was 
ordained in 1893, and served as pastor of the Arlington Avenue Presby- 
terian church at East Orange, N. J., from 1893 to 1908, when he was 
elected to the presidency of Middlebury College, which position he still 
fills. Doctor Thomas was a member in 1908-11 of the Vermont commis- 
sion on the tercentenary of the discovery of Lake Champlain ; member 
of the Vermont State board of education 1912-14; and chairman of the 
same for two years ; chairman of the commission on conservation of the 
natural resources of Vermont 1910-12; and chaplain of the first infan- 
try of the Vermont national guard 1913-16. He is a contributor to 
The Independent, The Nation, The Conarefjationalist, etc., and the 
author of " The Christian Faith and the Old Testament." The degree 
of D. D. was conferred upon him by Middlebury in 1907, by Amherst in 
1908 and by Dartmouth in 1909, and that of LL.D. by the University of 
Vermont in 1911. The work of Doctor Thomas as president of Middle- 
bury College has been strikingly successful, but only through persistent 
and arduous effort by a man in whom are united a remarkably winsome 
personality, supreme tactfulness, and, strangely, broad business capacity 
with profound scholarship. Since Doctor Thomas became the head of 
the institution the college property has been increased in value, by gifts 
persuaded by him, from $225,000 to $745,000, the endowment fund more 
than doubled in the same way, the annual income quadrupled, the faculty 
enlarged from ten professors to thirty, the number of students multiplied 
by three, and the tuition receipts lifted from $4,904 to $37,484, annually, 






Biographical Sketches 785 

with new departments added and the courses of study broadened. In 
June, 1918, Doctor Thomas completed the raising of a further fund of 
$300,000 for the college, upon the success of which effort an additional 
contribution of $100,000 by a single donor was conditioned. The bare 
recital testifies to Doctor Thomas's great efficiency, and stamps him as 
peculiarly fitted for his trust. In October, 1918, he was commissioned 
a chaplain in the United States army, with a view to an overseas 
assignment. 

Samuel Clark Wead, born in Brandon, Vt., September 20, 1805, 
came to Malone with his father, Jacob, in 1815. Jacob became a part- 
ner with Benjamin Clark, his brother-in-law, in merchandising at the 
corner of Main and Webster streets, and afterward, operating by himself, 
had his residence and a store combined on Elm street, adjacent to the 
present Episcopal church; and also engaged in what were for the time 
other considerable enterprises. Samuel C. began business in partner- 
ship with Guy Meigs in 1821, opening a store at Westville, prosecuting 
lumbering there and in Fort Covington, and also manufacturing and 
dealing in pot and pearl ashes. In 1826 the firm lumbered extensively 
in Canada, and in 1829 leased from Jacob Wead a saw mill in Constable 
and the several properties at the point known as " whiskey hollow," 
north of the village of Malone. These included a saw mill, a grist 
mill, distillery, brick yard, pottery and rope walk, and to them the 
lessees soon added a forge — buying the Hollembeck ore bed, west of 
the village, for their supply of iron. They also opened a store in a wing 
of the dwelling house of Hiram Horton on the site of the Eutland pas- 
senger station, but, having erected in 1831 the store building now occu- 
pied by the Peoples National Bank, on the corner of Mill and Main 
streets, changed their location to the latter point. They also owned 
and operated a steamboat between Fort Covington and Montreal, which 
was the first to run the rapids above the latter city. Mr. Meigs died 
in 1855, when Mr. Wead formed a new partnership with his son. Edwin 
L. Meigs, and Isaac F. Wilson to lumber in a big way in Canada, and 
still another with Benjamin S. W. Clark and John A. Fuller to conduct 
a store in Malone, which latter arrangement continued until 1863. Mr. 
Wead had engaged also at various times in lumbering at Chasm Falls 
and in Bellmont, and was for years the Franklin countj correspondenl 
of the Clinton County Bank at Plattsburgh, in which capacity be did 
at his store practically all of the banking business of the county until 
in 1846, at the same place, he established the Franklin County 
Bank, the first in the county, as a private or individual institution, in 



786 History of Franklin County 

which New York city gentlemen were partners. This bank went into 
liquidation upon the organization of the Bank of Malone (capitalized 
at $100,000, and later increased to $150,000), in which also Mr. Wead 
was the principal mover and president, with William A. Wheeler as 
cashier. A bank building was erected on the site of the present village 
library, and the institution flourished in a modest way, and served the 
business interests of the county usefully until 1865, when, upon the 
organization of the National Bank of Malone, it was closed — Mr. Wead 
having had a leading part in the formation of the new institution, and 
serving as its president until his death. Mr. Wead was very active in 
the movement to accomplish the building of the old Northern Railroad, 
and, besides having worked zealously in its interest at home, spent six 
months in Boston in effort to enlist capital for its building; and in 1847, 
with Hiram Horton, Guy Meigs and John L, Russell, gave the com- 
pany ten acres of land upon condition that it locate its shops in Malone. 
He was also a leader in forming the Malone Water Works Co. in 1857 
and the Malone Gas Light Co. about 1870. In 1872 he began the erec- 
tion of a paper mill, which was his last considerable business enterprise, 
and I think the only one for which he was responsible that he did not 
make a success. Mr. Wead was elected county treasurer in 1848, and 
from an early age was particularly and beneficially interested in educa- 
tional affairs. He was the first president of the village district board 
of education in 1867, so serving for seven years, and with results that 
prompted his successor in office to write : " If Mr. Wead had done 
nothing for Malone beyond what he did for its schools, that alone 
would entitle him to the affectionate remembrance of its citizens." In 
all of his undertakings, public and private. Mr. Wead was enterprising, 
progressive, sound in judgment, scrupulously correct and honest, deeply 
interested in the general welfare, and in a business aspect the foremost 
citizen that the county ever had. He was apt to be a bit domineering 
at times, but at heart was kind and in general association with friends 
and neighbors interesting and genial. His character was unsullied, and 
pettiness or meanness utterly foreign to him. Mr. Wead's second wife 
was Mary Kasson, a remarkable woman, possessed of great strength of 
character and endowed with exceptional intellectual qualities. She was 
preceptress of Franklin Academy in 1813, and, outliving her husband 
by a number of years, made in 1881 a Christmas gift to the village school 
district of the fine library building on Elm street as a memorial to her 
husband and son, Colonel Wead, which was " dedicated to the use of 
the public for the promotion of knowledge and morality." Mr. Wead 
died May 11, 1876. 



Biographical Sketches 787 

Frederic Fuller Wead, born in Malone January 26, is:;:,, worked 
in his youth in the railroad machine shops as an apprentice Eor nearly 
a year, and, then resuming- his studies, was graduated at Onion College, 
studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practiced the profession until 
the outbreak of the civil war. He entered the Union Army in May, 
1861, as first lieutenant of Co. I of the 16th regiment, but was soon 
transferred to staff duty as aide-de-camp to Genera] Slocum. In 1862 
he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 98th regiment, and 
eventually to the colonelcy. At Cold Harbor he was severely wounded 
in the shoulder, but, in defiance of the surgeon's prohibition, persisted 
in returning to the field the next day, and was killed while leading his 
men in a charge. He was an ardent patriot and a daring and capable 
soldier. With keen perceptions, a clear mind and sound judgment, and 
a fluent and eloquent speaker, Colonel Wead was one of the most bril- 
liant and promising men of the county. He was killed June 3, 186 I. 

Leslie C. Wead, born in Malone February 17. L851, was a graduate 
of Franklin Academy and Dartmouth College. He was admitted to the 
bar in 1873, and engaged in practice at Malone until 1890, He was 
also closely identified with a number of manufacturing and other com- 
mercial enterprises, and never lost opportunity to suggest, advocate and 
promote courses of action that were calculated to increase the number 
and importance of the town's industries and its welfare generally — 
especially its educational and moral conditions. Mr. Wead removed to 
Boston in 1890, and engaged there for twenty years in the business of 
real estate broker and agent. From 1910 until his death he acted as 
trustee in the management of various real estate trusts and as an expert 
on valuations of properties taken by the city or damaged in the con- 
struction of public improvements. His business standing in Boston 
was high, and his judgment and advice were widely sought in matters 
that he had made his specialty, and were greatly respected. Mr. Wead 
died in Boston March 16, 1918. 

Jonathan Wallace, bom in Essex county, was a participant in the 
battle of Plattsburgh, and came to Fort Covington in 1815, where he 
was prominent for forty years in all matters affecting the town, and had 
a good standing at the bar. Except for a break of two years he was a 
justice of the peace continuously from 1818 to 1856, was supervisor in 
1840, and a Presidential elector the same year. As a practitioner he 
was rated as somewhat timid and hesitating, but usually sound in his 
advice and conclusions. He died June 14, 1856. 



788 History of Franklin County 

George H. Wood, a descendant of one of the first settlers, was born 
in Malone in 1817, and became principal of Franklin Academy, and 
afterward, until 1851, a practicing lawyer here. In 1851 he removed 
to Wisconsin, where he continued to practice for a number of years, and 
then went to the Colorado gold fields. There he perfected an invention 
of value in mining, which he sold for a moderate fortune, but was robbed 
the day before he had planned to start East, and left penniless. He 
then located for two or three years in Illinois, and in 1868 returned 
to Malone, and made his home here until he died January 18, 1898. 

Charles C. Whittelsey, born in Connecticut in 1818, came to 
Northern New York in his young manhood, after having acquired large 
landed interests in Bangor. He identified himself with Malone about 
1850, engaged in the foundry business and in the manufacture of woolen 
cloth, and for many years was one of the town's principal citizens. He 
died March 5, 1889. 

Horatio P. Wilson, born in Bangor in 1824, was always a farmer 
except during his army service in the civil war, in which he rose to be 
a captain in the 142-d regiment. He was struck by a fragment of shell, 
suffering a spinal injury which caused paralysis of the legs. For thirty 
vears he never knew a painless hour, and only an indomitable will kept 
him up. For all of his crippled condition and suffering, he was remark- 
ably active, both in business and in politics. . He was superintendent of 
the poor for six years. He died April 22, 1894. 

Wallace H. Webster, born in Constable March 27, 1827, was for 
several years in trade at Trout Biver, with his brother, Edwin A., as 
partner, and also for a time with Edwin L. Meigs. In 1860 he removed 
to Malone, where he continued the mercantile business, and then bought 
the tannery which he and his brothers operated for thirty-odd years. 
Mr. Webster was a partisan of the extremest sect, of the Democratic 
persuasion, and gave unsparingly of time and effort to his party's service. 
No man was ever more loyal to his friends, and locally he was public 
spirited and one of the best of citizens. He died June 28. 1892. 

Sylvester S. Willard, born in Middlebury, Vt., in 1830, came to 
Malone in 1853 or 1854, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but 
himself recognizing his lack of assertiveness and disbelieving his adapta- 
bility to the practice of the profession, made little use of his really 






Biographical Sketches 789 

superior accomplishments until after his return from service in the civil 
war as a captain in the 98th regiment, lie was elected soon afterward 
justice of the peace, and until his death was practically the only magis- 
trate in the town who was active in such capacity. He Boon came to be 
appreciated as having one of the best minds and as one of the best judges 
of law in the county. Mr. Willard was also an officer in the internal 
revenue service, and was elected school commissioner in is;:,. Disdain- 
ing to lift even a hand to gain a second term, he was not re-elected, 
though his service had been excellent. He died October 11, lsiio. 

Parrit B. Wolf, born at Fort Covington in 1826, was a hotel keeper 
at Bangor from 1859 until the outbreak of the civil war, when he raised 
a company, and went out as a captain in the 98th regiment. Alter the 
war he located in Malone, and continued to reside lure until is;;, when 
he was appointed to a government clerkship in Washington, where he 
died January 14, 1890. 

A. A. Wilbur, born in Keeseville in 1834, Located in .St. Lawrence 

county before the civil war, and came to Constable in 1864 to engage in 
the practice of medicine. He was active in politics as a Republican, and 
influential in all local affairs. He died August 3, 1888. 

Walter H. Winchester, born in Malone March 20, 1844, served in 
the Union army during the civil war, and after his return completed 
his course at Franklin Academy, and was graduated at Amherst Col- 
lege. He then became principal of Fort Covington Academy, and 
studied law r while he was teaching. After practicing at Fort Covington 
for a few years with only indifferent success, he removed to North 
Dakota in 1885, and, open, hail-fellow-well-met, and without a single 
vicious habit, found the West a field wherein he was at home and bound 
to make his mark. He was elected district superintendent of schools 
almost at once, and soon afterward district judge for a district compris- 
ing ten counties — continuing by successive re-elections to hold the latter 
office until his death. He died at Bismarck March 6, 1913. 

Charles H. Young, born at Bleeker, Fulton county, November 2G, 
1857, located at St. Begis Falls with his parents in 1866, and continued 
to make that place his home until 1896. At an early age Mr. Young 
became active in business, engaging in merchandising and lumbering, 
working as a surveyor, etc., and evincing interest in all of the civic 



790 Histoky of Franklin County 

and political affairs of the locality. He served the town as supervisor 
for a number of years, and was an efficient worker for the Kepublican 
party. Mr. Young removed to Texas in 1896 to represent two land and 
timber companies of New York city in developing and marketing their 
Texas properties, and is still interested himself in a small way in oil 
wells there. Since 1912 he has made Malone his home, though still 
representing his former Texas employees in special transactions. Mr. 
Young has a remarkable fund of general information, and a sound and 
keen business judgment. 



APPENDIX 



ALTAMONT. 



Supervisors. — Howard H. Hobson,- 1891 ; Ernest T. Fletcher, 1892; Edwin H. 
Page, 1S93-95; William E. LaFountain, 1896-1900; Eugene M. Austin, 1901-09; 
VV. J. Dievendorf, 1909-10; Eugene M. Austin, 1911-14; Leon P. Demars, 
1915-18. 

Saint Alphonsus Church, Tupper Lake, incorporated November 29, 1890, with 
John H. Weir and Herbert Bernier lay trustees. Church edifice erected 1891, 
and since enlarged. List of rectors: D. J. Halde, Michael W. Holland, Francis 
S. Charboneau, Leon Cochard, Henry Comerais, E. O. Hervieux. Present lay 
trustees: Fred LeBoeuf and P. H. McCarthy. 

Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of Altamont incorporated January 2, 
1896, though conference appointments had been made to the charge regularly 
from 1S92. First trustees: William P. Southworth, David A. McEwen and 
J. A. Thissell. The first church edifice was burned in 1899, and was promptly 
rebuilt. List of pastors: F. T. Clark, 1892-93; Aaron Thompson, 1894; J. C. 
Culligan, 1895-97, with H. C. Abbott assistant in 1897; E. F. Felton, 1898- 
1900; W. A. Sullivan, 1901; Joseph Harkness, 1902; W. F. Ball, 1903-04; 
W. D. Aubrey, 1905-07; J. F. Day, 1908-12; John Calkins, 1913; A. E. Budd, 
1914-17; J. R. Fretz, 1917-18. The trustees for 1918 are Wm. P. Southworth, 
J. I. Talman, E. A. Drew, J. A. Thissell, A. M. Ewan and H. E. Bellows. 

St. John's Methodist Episcopal Church of Faust, N". Y., incorporated April 13, 
1901, with P. Blake, Kenneth W. Kinnear and Wm. Black as trustees; but the 
Presbyterians having established a mission at Faust at about the same date, 
and it having been questioned if a second Protestant church in the same 
locality could prosper, the organization was abandoned. 

The Presbyterian Church of Tupper Lake, N. Y., located at Faust, incor- 
porated December 15, 1905, with Fred W. Loveless, Henry P. Suman and 
J. Howard Brown as trustees. There had been, however, a mission organization 
from 1900, and a church edifice had been erected in 1901. List of missionaries, 

supply and pastors: Ferguson, 1900; Joseph McNeil. 1900; John 

Nevin, 1901; Aaron W. Maddox, 1901-13; Caleb H. Hodges, 1914-16; William 
H. Wysham, 1916-17; Wm. B. MacNeil, 191S. Trustees for 1918: J. K. Grant, 
Ralph Hastings, J. Howard Brown, W. J. Snyder and James L. Jacobs. 

Beth Joseph Synagogue was preceded by Congregation Anshey Betli Joseph, 
which deeded the synagogue premises to the former in 1896. Prior to this date 
services' had been held in private residences. B. Brennglass was rabbi in 1918. 

Roman Catholic Church at Derrick (not incorporated) had its beginning 
about 1900 under the ministration of Rev. J. E. Berard as rector. After 
industrial activity at Derrick ceased services were held only at infrequent times. 

St. Thomas' Protestant Episcopal Church at Tupper Lake had its beginning 

[791] 



792 History of Franklin County 

with lay readings by John Hurd about 1890. Organization effected in 1899, 
and church edifice erected same year. The parish was served for a long time 
by missionaries, including Rev. McCauslin, Rev. Tricket, Rev. Goodrich, Rev. 
J. N. Marvin, Rev. Smith, and then, until his death in 1917, by Rev. C. W. 
Boyd as rector. The church has since been without a rector. 

Church of the Holy Name, at Faust, incorporated January 20, 1904, with 
Ned Buston and Ernest LeBoeuf as lay trustees. Church edifice erected in 
1904, but not completed until 1910. List of rectors: Alexander Klauder, Joseph 
St. Jacques, Timothy Holland and Charles DesRosiers. 

Altamont Lodge No. 609, I. O. 0. F., organized September 9, 1891, with 
Richard S. Gile, noble grand; Geo. E. Senger, vice-grand; Louis DeLuneett, 
secretary; and Nathan Reemer, treasurer. Officers for 1918 include: Nathan 
Cohn, noble grand; Charles A. DeLancett, vice-grand; John A. Chalmers, secre- 
tary; Horace E. Bellows, treasurer. 

St. John Baptist Society organized in 1893, with D. Chenez, president; 
Joseph E. Potvin, secretary; and D. J. Coutu, treasurer. The officers for 1918 
include: Leon P. Demars, president; E. Corneau, vice-president; Joseph E. 
Potvin, secretary; arid O. J. Gauthier, treasurer. 

Mt. Arab Lodge, F. and A. M., organized June 1, 1904, with A. T. Clark, Jr., 
W. M.; Clarence L. King, S. W. ; R. L. Morgan, J. W.; E. M. Austin, treasurer; 
and R. A. Knapp, secretary. Officers for 19 IS' include: T. E. Bruce, W. M. ; 
Elihu Propp, S. W. ; F. R. Seigel, J. W. ; K. C. Ingham, S. D. ; Max Grabensteen, 
J. D.; W. D. Wilson, secretary; T. J. Taylor, treasurer. 

BANGOR. 

Supervisors. — Joseph Plumb, 1813-17; Noah Moody, 1818-20; Joseph Plumb, 
1821-25; George Adams, 1826-27; Joseph Plumb, 1828; George Adams, 1829-32; 
William Plumb, 1833; George Adams, 1834; William Plumb, 1835; James 
Adams, 1836-37; George Adams, 1838; Joshua Dickinson, 1839 1 ; George Adams, 
1840-42; Talmadge Barnum, 1843-44; Joshua Dickinson, 1845; Abel Wilcox, 
1846-48; Allen Hinman, Jr., 1849-50; George H. Stevens, 1852-53; Joseph 
Eldred, 1852-53; George H. Stevens, 1854; Joseph Wilson, 1855-56; Wells S. 
Dickinson, 1857-59; Clark A. Patterson, I860; Edmund F. Sargent, 1861-62; 
Isaac Delong, 1863; George Plumb, 1864-65; William H. Hyde, 1866-67; Allen 
Hinman, 1868-69; George W. Woodard, 1870-71; Fayette W. Lawrence, 1872-73; 
Solon Reynolds, 1874-75; Isaac J. Moxley, 1876-77; Edwin A. Taylor, 1878-79; 
Franklin Brown, 1S80-81; William W. Plumb, 1882-S3; George L. Donaldson, 
1884-85; Charles T. Eldred, 1886-88; Edwin R. Tower, 18S9-92; George L. 
Donaldson, 1893; William B. Steenberge, 1894-1903; Fred M. Johnson, 1904- 
12; Willard B. Royce, 1913-16; Howard H. Lee, 1917-18. 

The First Congregational Church and Society of the Town of Bangor, N. Y., 
was organized in 1809, but not incorporated until February 9, 1833. The first 
trustees named in the certificate of incorporation were Joshua Dickinson, 
Jonathan H. Farr, David Paine, Franklin Tilton and Henry Stevens. The church 
edifice was erected at South Bangor in 1842, and the society has the right to 
participate in the use of the union churches at North Bangor and at West 
Bangor. List of pastors: Moses Parmelee, 1827-29; Bliss Burnap, 1832^45; 



Appendix 793 

Ashbel Parmelee, 1845-48; S. H. Williams, 1848-52; A. B. Dilley, 1852-63; 

B. H. Marvin, 1864; R. H. Gidman, 1867-69; Bliss Burnap, 1870-72; D. B. 
Bradford, 1873-78; W. C. Sexton, 1878-82; T. D. Phillips, 1882-87; G. H. 
Jameson, 1887-88; W. L. Hendrick, 18S8-94; R. E. Andrew, 1804-98; Wilbur 
Rand, 1899-1901; Lewis Hughes, 1902-08; Albert Sleep, 1908-10; Isaac Steen- 
son, 1910-11; George S. Girvan, 1911-12; Silas H. McKeon, 1913-15; A. H. 
McMinn, 1915-16; Charles Wallraff, 1918. The present trustees are A. S. Knapp, 
L. H. Davis and C. R. Plumb. 

The First Christian Church in the Town of Bangor was incorporated April 
11, 1846, with Jesse Smith, Hiram Frank and Jason Baker as trustees, though 
the actual organization dates from 1817. The society has the right to share 
in the use of the union church at West Bangor, but its organization has not 
been continued, nor has it had a pastor for nearly fifty years, though formerly 
the strongest sect in the town. Among those who were pastors were Ezekiel 
Hildreth, Solomon Sayles and H. W. Pierce. 

The First .Methodist Episcopal Church in Bangor was incorporated December 
28, 1851, but had been practically organized in 1835, and must have had minis- 
tration by circuit riders considerably earlier. The trustees in 1851 wore 
Richard King, Anderson Wilson and Thompson Graves. Until 1903 the society 
worshiped at North Bangor in the town hall, but in that year erected its own 
church building there. The pastors have been: H. Graves, 1835; A. Castle, 
1836; B. F. Brown, 1837; B. F. Brown and John Wallace. 1838; Byron Aldcn, 
1839'; Peter D. Gorrie, 1840; Philo S. Bennett, 1S41-42; Morenus Thrasher. 
1843; Almanzo Blackman, 1S44-45; J. T. Allen, 1846-47; Royal Stratton, 1848- 
49; 1850, supplied; Ebenezer Pease, 1851; Ebenezer Pease and Alonzo Wells, 
1852; Alonzo Wells and James Barnes, 1853; W. H. Blanchard, 1854-55; 
Dennison D. Parker, 1856-57; S. Griffin, 1858-59; W. D. Moore, 1860; W. D. 
Moore and A. F. Bigelow, 1861; O. Mott, 1862; W. S. Chase. 1S63; J. L. 
Humphrey, 1864; A. McLaren, 1865; W. G. Lent, 1866-68; G. G. Greevey, 1869; 

C. M. Arnold, 1870; M. R. Pierce, 1871-72; A. C. Danforth, 1873; 1874, sup- 
plied; C. E. Dorr, 1875-76; W. E. Reynolds, 1877-79; W. C. Smith, 1880-81; 
J. B. MeCullough, 1882; Henry Hesselgrave. 1883; C. L. Capron, 1SS4; W. C. 
Lent, 1SS5; Alonzo Wells and W. A. Wood, 1886; J. H. Myers, 1SS7-88; H. L. 
Campbell. 1889-90; R. H. Ferguson, 1891-93; J. B. Dunham, 1894-96; William 
Thomas, 1897-99; Joseph Harkness, 1900-01; C. J. Middleton, 1902-07; W. II. 
Moore, 1908-10; W. H. Moore, G. W. Crosby, 1911-12; Alex. Scott, 1913-15; 
W. A. Wright, 1916-17; T. W. Carling, 1918: The 1918 trustees are Amos 
Hapgood, T. D. Barnum, Walter Childs, Reuben Harwood, Eli Sawyer and 
W. L. Hyde. 

The South Bangor Methodist Episcopal Church incorporated January 23, 
1860, with Rufus Davenport. Abel Wilcox, George Mott, Alfred Silsbee and 
Luther Brown as trustees. Its church edifice was built in 1S56. and, in common 
with the North Bangor church, the society is entitled to share in the use of the 
old town house or union church at West Bangor. Though this is a separate 
organization, it is in effect one with the North Bangor church, and the history 
of one and the pastors are identical with the other. The present trustees are 
Geo. D. Bradford. F. W. Brown and N. N. Keeler. 



794 History of Franklin County 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church of the Bangor and Burke Circuit organized 
in 1850, and had stations at one time in several neighborhoods in various towns. 
Burke was set off in 1871. The church edifice was erected in 1871, just over 
the Bangor line in the town of Fort Covington. List of pastors: Joel Grinnell, 

K. Wood, L. L. Gaskill, Wheelock, C. Stiles, L. 0. Hathaway, F. 0. 

Putnam, J. Quay, McKee, M. Sisco, Martin H. Meeker, Wm. S. May, 

C. W. Lord, John G. Hull, 0. L. Doolittle, Blackman, Wm. Rist, 

— . — Hnghins, E. Putnam, A. A. House, John Blanchard, A. P. Gouthey, 

W. E. Perry, H. S. Stokes, Myron French, C. A. Heath, C. E. Cahee, Walter 
Lewis, George D. Jock. Of these a number were local men. 

The First Seventh Day Adventist Church of Bangor incorporated January 16, 
1864, with H. W. Lawrence, Russell Harrington and S. A. Howard as trustees, 
though its organization must date twenty years earlier. In 1864 it bought the 
house of worship that had been owned and used by the French Presbyterian 
Church, and continues to hold services there. 

The French Presbyterian Church of Bangor had only a brief existence. The 
date of its organization is unknown, but was earlier than 1850, for the society 
then acquired title to the church building in which it had previously worshiped. 
The church building was sold in 1864, and is now owned by the Seventh Day 
Adventists. 

St. Mark's Church (P. E.) was never more than a mission. The church 
edifice was built in 1876, and was sold in 1902. Its activity had ceased before 
then. 

St. Edward's Church (R. C. ) is not incorporated of record, but was organized 
at least as early as 1902, as it then purchased St. Mark's house of worship. 
It is located at West Bangor, and its lay trustees in 1918 are Albert Goyer and 
John McCarthy. 

St. Augustine's Church, Bangor (R. C), incorporated September, 1887, with 
Joseph Vogel and Joseph Trepannier lay trustees. Church edifice erected on 
cross road from North Bangor to Bangor in 1890, and moved some years later 
to location on main highway between Malone and North Bangor. List of 
rectors: Henry Cbmerais, Joseph Jacques, J. R. Lauzon. The 1918 trustees 
are Thomas B. White and John B. Mallette. 

Bangor Grange No. 967, Patrons of Husbandry, organized in 1898. List of 
officers in 1918: George W. Rich, master; Fredus H. Wilcox, secretary; Mrs. 
George W. Rich, lecturer; Wm. C. Drury, treasurer; Mrs. S. W. Roys, chaplain; 
Elwin A. Tarbell, overseer. 

North Bangor Lodge No. 556, F. and A. M., organized June 14, 1865. List 
of officers in 1918: Patrick H. Tummons, W. M. ; George W. Rich, S. W.; John 
Clark DeLong, J. W. ; Charles E. Walker, secretary; James W. DeLong, treasurer. 

BELLMONT. 

Supervisors.— Roswell A. Weed. 1833-34; Harry B. Hatch, 1835; Roswell A. 
Weed, 1836-37; John D. Miles. 1838-39; George Winkley. 1840-41; Pliny C. 
Daggett, 1842; Marcus Heading, 1843; William Weed. 1844—45; Abraham 
Revnolds, 1S46-47; William Weed, 1S48-49; John D. Miles, 1850; Jonas G. 



Appendix 795 

Clark, 1851; William Weed, 1852-53; Charles F. Kirby, 1854-55; William 
Weed, 1856; Sylvester F. Storrs, 1857-5S; James Bellows, 1859^-60; Gilbert L. 
Havens, 1861; Charles F. Kirby, 1862; James Bellows, 1863-65; George Winkley, 
1S66-67; James M. Mead, 1S68; Matthew J. Reynolds, 1869-70; John Kelley, 
1871-72; John P. Hart, 1873-74; Charles F. Rood, 1875; Charles F. Kirby, 
1876-77; Matthew J. Reynolds, 1878; Osborne W. Moody, 1879<-84; X. Monroe 
Marshall, 1885; Lansing Donaldson, 1886-91; Sherman J. Heading, 1892-93; 
Jacob Taubenheimer, 1894-97; Matthew J. Reynolds, 1898-1900; Daniel Con- 
nors, 1901-03; Sherman J. Heading, 1904-06; Frank L. Carpenter, 1907-08; 
Herman R. Glazier, 1909-12; John H. English, 1913-14; Jacob Taubenheimer, 
1915-16; Hubert Genaway, 1917-18. 

The First Congregationalist Society of Bellmont incorporated November 13, 
1849, with John Richey, Joseph Williamson and Thomas McKenny as trustees. 
No further record concerning it, except that it had held worship earlier. 

The Presbyterian-Congregationalist Society of Bellmont incorporated Feb- 
ruary 23, 1868, with Joseph Williamson, Samuel Gregg, Richard Shonyo, Edward 
Burke, Robert Taylor and John White as trustees. Andrew M. Millar, stationed 
at Burke, served as pastor for many years, from, 1867 to 1S06; P. A. Walker, 
1896-1904; J. A. Langford, 1905-06; E. C. Wiley, 1907-10; John Baniford. 
1913-15. The church has had no pastor since 1915, but has been served by 
J. R. Driffield of Malone. Present trustees: Hardy T. Miller, Edwin Collins 
and Arthur Drew. Church edifice begun in 1868 and finished in 1S70. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Bellmont incorporated December 7, 
1870, at Brainardsville. but Bellmont had had Methodist ministration as a part 
of Chateaugay circuit from 1835 or earlier, and had been recognized by the con- 
ference as an independent charge from 1853. The church edifice had been 
built in 1866. The first trustees were Selden Phelps, Wm. Walbridge and 
Cyrus Merrill. List of pastors: 1853, supplied from Chateaugay; B. F. Wood, 
1854; to be supplied in 1855; Abel S. Barter, 1856; Wm. S. Smith. 1857-58; 
A. Wells, 1859; Thomas H. Doty, 1860; Asa L. Smith, 1861-62; S. F. Danforth, 
1863-64; J. B. Hammond, 1865-66; Squire Boyd, 1867-68; O. L. Cole, 1869; 
supplied from 1870 to 1886 from Chateaugay or Burke, which lists see; Alonzo 
Wells, 1887; William Thomas, 1888-92; John Bragg, 1893-95; A. L. Smith, 
1896-1900; G. F. Smith, 1901-03; C. E. Hastings. 1904-07; Elmer E. Day, 
1908-09; H. E. Davis, 1910-12; Reuben Staniforth, 1913; R. F. Green. 1914-15; 
C. H. Bresee, 1916-18. Present trustes: R. L. Arnold, E. E. Thurber. Wm. II. 
Davis, F. M. Hoy. 

Bellmont Centre Methodist Episcopal Church incorporated November 21. 1887, 
with John C. Lewis, Elijah Heading and Clarence Drown as trustees, but must 
have had an informal organization something like thirty years earlier. The 
first preacher was Alonzo Wells, and the second Benj. Franklin Brown, a 
farmer living in the vicinity and known as "Priest"' Brown. Otherwise its 
pastors have been the same as those at Brainardsville. The church edifice was 
built in 1888, services having been held previously in the school house or the 
town house. The trustees for 1918 are Nelson Branch. Wm. Otis. ('. E. Drown. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Chateaugay Lake incorporated .Tune 5, 
1889, with Nathan Thurber, J. W. Merrill and Henry N. Cooty as trustees. 
but apparently never evinced any activity, though services were held occasionally. 



796 History of Franklin County 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Chateaugay Lake incorporated October 
14, 1914, with Charles Porter, George Cheyne, Alice M. Strath, Mrs. George 
Cheyne, Wilbur Signor and Thomas Smith, trustees. A site for a church build- 
ing was donated by Dr. Thurber, and the edifice erected in 1916. The society 
is served by the pastor at Brainardsville. The trustees for 1918 are Charles 
Porter, Mrs. George Cheyne, Mrs. Alice Smith, Wilbur Signor and Thomas 
Smith. 

Saint Agnes Church of Chateaugay Lake was incorporated March 30, 1875, 
with Patrick Leahy and Michael Harrigan as lay trustees. The organization 
has never had a place of worship other than the school house, and has always 
been served by the priest from Chateaugay. At present such services as are 
held are at Brainardsville. 

A Methodist Episcopal church was built at Owl's Head in 1898, and is an 
outcharge of the church at Chasm Falls. The trustees for 1918 are Fred Liver- 
nois, Joseph Walker. 

St. Elizabeth's Church at Mountain View (not incorporated) was built in 
1907 as a mission of the Roman Catholic church at Chasm Falls, and is served 
by the rector of that church. 

The First Union Church of Mountain View was incorporated May 29, 1915, 
with C. C. Morgan, J. W. Pond and S. R. Payne as trustees. A church edifice 
was erected in 1915. No pastor has been engaged as yet. The 1918 trustees 
are S. R. Payne, Charles E. Morgan and J. W. Pond. 

BOMBAY. 

Supervisors.— Wilson Randall, 1833-34; Amherst K. Williams, 1835-37; John 
S. Eldridge, 1838-39; Elias Bowker, 1840-41; Elvin K. Smith, 1842-43; Amasa 
Townsend, 1844; Elias Bowker. 1845; Amasa Townsend, 1846-47; Charles Rus- 
sell, 1848; Jacob G. Reynolds, 1849-50; Charles Russell, 1851; Jacob G. 
Reynolds, 1852; George Russell, 1853; Michael O'Keefe, 1854; Alfred Fulton, 
1855-57; Schuyler Button, 1858-60; Alfred Fulton, 1861; Dennis McCarthy, 
1862; Jacob G. Reynolds, 1863; Schuyler Button, 1864-65; C. R. Reynolds, 1S66; 
Jacob G. Reynolds, 1867-68; Gurdon S. Mills, 1869; Jacob W. Webb, 1S70-72; 
Jacob G. Reynolds, 1873; Gurdon S. Mills, 1S74; Jacob G. Reynolds, 1875; 
L. Grenville Whitney, 1876; Calvin B. Gilchrist. 1877-78; Jacob G. Reynolds, 
1879-80; Ernest G. Reynolds, 1SS 1-85; Gurdon S. Mills, 1886; Henry M. Bero, 
1887-88; Ernest G. Reynolds, 1889; Henry M. Bero, 1890-91; Ernest G. 
Reynolds, 1892-93; Thomas A. Sears, 1894-98; Charles R. Matthews, 1899-1903; 
Maurice W. Lantry, 1904-12; John H. Kingston, 1913-14; J. J. McKenna, 
1915-18. 

The Church of St. Patrick at Hogansburgh, founded in 1827, but not incor- 
porated until November 7, 1834, with James Murphy, David O'Neil, Patrick 
Feeley, Lantry Adams, John Kerren and John Hammill as lay trustees. The 
church was served until 1834 by priests from St. Regis; church edifice bejjun 
in 1S27. Rectors: John McNulty. 1834 to 1841; James Keveny, 1S43-51 
Thomas Keveny, 1851-55; Maurice Sheehan, 1855-59; Thomas McGinn. 1S59-62 
J. DeLuca, 1862-69; Thomas E. Walsh, 1869-78; William S. Kelly, 1878 
Thomas Walsh, 1878; Michael J. Brown, from 1878 until his death in 1917 



Appendix 797 

Hugh O'Reilly, 1917-18. Trustees for 1918: Thomas J. Lantry and Albert 
Brennan. Hogansburgh included originally all Catholic charges between Ogdens- 
burg and Lake Champlain. 

St. Joseph's Church, Bombay, incorporated July 15, 1905, with William 11. 
Doonan and William H. McKenna as lay trustees. Church edifice erected in 
1905. Became an independent charge in 1912; previously served irregularly by 
priests from Fort Covington. Rector, James E. Duffy, 1912-18. Trustees for 
1918: David Cavanagh and William Duemars. 

The Bombay Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church incorporated March 
26, 1832, with James McRoberts, Joseph Elliott, Simon Alverson, John O'Riley 
and Wilson Randall, trustees; reincorporated October 26, 1835 with James 
McRoberts, Charles Russell, Joseph Elliott, Pardon Trobridge, Samuel Mott, 
Ira Tracy, Simon Alverson, Samuel Trobridge and Hiram Mott, trustees. 
Church edifice erected in 1836 or 1837 and rebuilt in 1867. Bombay was a 
part of the Malone circuit in 1828, when the first known Methodist services 
were held. It was later joined with Helena, South Bombay and Brasher. 
List of pastors: I. E. Hoddana, 1836; J. E. Stoddard and J. Lowry, 1837; 
Peter D. Gorrie, 1S38; P. D. Gorrie and John Wallace, 1S39; Charles Northrup, 
1840; Rufus E. King, 1841; Elijah Smead, 1842^3; Matthew Bennett and 
A. F. Bigelow, 1844; Matthew Bennett and Elijah Smith, 1845; Charles Johnson, 
1846; 1847, supplied; Rufus E. King, 184S-49; Erastus W. Jones, 1850-51; 
J. B. Graham, 1852; T. W. Thurston, 1S53-54; Joseph DeLarme, 1855-56; 
O. Mott, 1857; E. Briggs, 185S; A. Shaw, 1S59; W. S. Chase, 1860; L. L. Green, 
1861-64; A. Bramley, 1865; C. Manson, 1866-74; E. Will, 1875-76; see Fort 
Covington for 1877-1901; W. H. English, 1902-03; G. F. Smith, 1904; J. F. 
Day, 1905-07; F. R. Griffiths, 190S-10; D. E. Robson, 1911-14; C. E. Woodley, 
1915-17; J. C. Culligan, 1918. Present trustees: J. J. Shields, Ira Eldred. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of South Bombay incorporated November 4, 
1890, though organized at unknown date much earlier. A church edifice erected 
in 1891. Trustees in 1890: James Moore, D. A. Stanton, George W. Russell, 
John Barrett. Trustees in 1918: B. M. Phelps, E. E. Flanders, Win. Sweet. 

The Methodist Episcopal Mission at St. Regis, founded in 1847, and church 
edifice erected in 1849. List of pastors: J. P. Jennings, 184S-50; Rufus E. 
King, 1S51-53; T. Richey, 1854; Daniel Austin, 1855-57; L. Brown, 1858-60; 
Alex. LeClair, 1861-62; M. Taylor,' 1863-64; 1S65-67, supplied; T. LaForte, 
1868-86; Ebenezer Arnold, 1887-88; Alonzo Wells, 1889-94; W. W. Clawson, 
1895-97; Alonzo Wells, 1898-99; W. C. Kinsbury, 1900-04; John Tagg. 1905- 
08; J. J. Oke, 1909-10; C. E. Cahee, 1911-14; D. A. Wright, 1915-16; Louis 
Bruce, 1917-18. 

St. James's P. E. Mission. The first Episcopalian services at Hogansburgh 
were held probably by Eleazer Williams in 1831. In 1834 a missionary located 
at Malone visited the place, and held services in a school house. In the winter 
of 1834-35 he gave a quarter of his time to work in this field. Mr. Hogan 
had erected a church in 1834, which was never finished. In 1S36 occasional 
services were held here, and from that time to 1850 the movement had no life. 
In that year Eleazer Williams renewed his ministrations, and continued them 
until his death in 1858. The movement again died, but the mission was 



798 History of Franklin County 

re-established in 1870, and in 1874 the present church edifice was built. When- 
ever the organization has had a rector it has usually been in combination with 
the Episcopal church at Fort Covington. 

BRANDON. 

Supervisors. — Henry Stevens, Jr., 1828-31; Jonathan H. Farr, 1832-33; Henry 
Stevens, Jr., 1834; Jonathan H. Farr, 1835-36; Jason Baker, 1837; James H. 
Holland, 1838; Henry Stevens, Jr., 1839-40; James H. Holland, 1841; Shubal 
Hastings, 1842; Henry Stevens, Jr., 1843-44; Alexander Sargent, 1845-46; James 
H. Holland, 1847-48; Jason Baker, 1849-50; Jonathan H. Farr, 1851-52; Jason 
Baker, 1853-54; George W. Fletcher, 1855-56; Henry Whitman, 1857; Henry Y. 
Tarbell, 1858-59; Shubal Hastings, 1860; Ransom Harrington, 1861; Henry 
Whitman, 1S62-63; Nathan O. Adams, 1864-65; George W. Fletcher, 1866-75; 
0. LeRoy Reynolds, 1876-S0; Almanzo Hutchins, 1881-82; 0. LeRoy Reynolds, 
1883; Almanzo Hutchins, 1884-87; Henry A. Eaton, 1888-90; Herbert H. 
Reynolds, 1891-95; Newton B. Tarbell, 1896-98; Henry A. Eaton, 1899-1900; 
Berton L. Reynolds, 1901-06; Floyd A. Hutchins, 1907-0S; Gaius A. Lane, 
1909-12; L. C. Bowen, 1913-18. 

Baptist Church of Brandon, established at unknown date prior to 1S48, as. it 
then had forty-eight members. No records available except reports to St. 
Lawrence Baptist Association. Pastors: L. C. Herrick, 1848; J. A. Smith, 
1853-54. Last report, in 1856, was that church was feeble, and had no pastor. 

Union Church, Brandon, an unincorporated body, with date of organization 
unknown. The only known record concerning it is in report of the Baptist 
church, where reference is made to the fact that there had been preaching by 
ministers of other denominations in 1848. The informal organization continued 
until 1891, with preaching irregularly by clergymen from Bangor or other out- 
side places. 

The First Congregational S'ociety of Brandon incorporated March 16, 1891, 
with Romanzo Joy, Alfred Sherwin and Orville F. Barber, trustees. Church 
edifice erected same year. Pastors: W. L. Hendrick, 1891-94; R. E. Andrew, 
1895-98; Wilbur Rand, 1900; L. T. Hughes, 1902-08; Albert Sleep, 1909; Isaac 
Steenson, 1910-11; George S. Girvan, 1912; Silas H. McKeen, 1913-14; J. B. 
Webster, 1917. 

Holiness Movement Church at Brandon Center organized in 1905. Church 
edifice erected same year. Those in charge, in couples for six months each, for 
the first years were: Mae and Gertie Peterson, Annie Weary and Rena Hall, 
Allen Boyd, Mary Tanahill Nellis. Then from 1908 pastors were: T. O. Roe, 
R. J. Dey, R. E. Featherstone, A. A. Sturgeon, H. Perry, S. S. Buell. 

BRIGHTON. 

Supervisors. — James M. Wardner, 1859-62; Apollos A. Smith, 1863; James 
M. Wardner, 1864-67; Apollos A. Smith, 1868-75; Charles E. Martin, 1876-83; 
Henry B. L. Smith, 1884-90; Phelps Smith, 1891-92; James M. Wardner, 1893; 
Euclid C. Pine, 1894-97; John Carrier, 1898-1901; Clarence A. MacArthur, 
1902-08; Charles J. Riley, 1909-18. 



Appendix 799 

The Church of St. John in the Wilderness is the outgrowth of Episcopalian 
services held at Paul Smith's by clergymen guests, and was organized and 
church edifice erected in 1S77. Church was enlarged and improved in 1892 
and 1896. It is open only in the summer months, and is supplied by Bummer 
visitors. 

The Church of the Angel Gabriel at Paul Smith's organized as a Roman 
Catholic mission in 1894. Rectors: Ferdinand J. Lussier, 1894-95; Michael 
Holland, 1S96-97; A. Constantineau, 1898; Zeno DeCarey, 1899; Joseph Eer- 
vieux, 1903-11; Joseph E. Berard, 1911-18. Church edifice erected in 1S96. 

The Church of the Assumption at Gabriels incorporated September 2, 1911, 
with Charles Downs and Charles Wheeler lay trustees. It is served by the 
priest at Lake Clear, or by some priest who is an inmate of the sanatorium. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, date of organization unknown. The church edifice 
was built in 1893. Services are held on alternate Sundays by a minister from 
Bloomingdale. 

Presbyterian mission at Keese's Mills was established in 1889, and a church 
building erected about 1900, when it was under fche charge of Rev. Wm. B. Lusk, 
who remained until 1906. Rev. T. Bertram Anderson came in 1909, and con- 
tinues in charge. There is also a preaching station at McCollom's. 

Rainbow Sanatorium was founded by the Order of Foresters for the treatment 
of members of the order who are afflicted with incipient tuberculosis. It was 
opened for the reception of patients July 10, 1910, and can accommodate fifty 
persons. J. Seymour Emans is the resident physician. 

Sanatorium Gabriels was founded in 1905 by Sisters of Mercy, who had a 
fund of only $15 with which to start, but by 1903 they had expended over 
$140,000. There are a dozen or more buildings, and the institution has its 
own electric light plant and waterworks system. It can accommodate fifty 
patients. Though under Roman Catholic management, it is non-sectarian. Its 
administration building was burned January 18, 1916. involving a loss of $40,000. 

BURKE. 

Supervisors. — Loren Botsford. 1S44-47; Reuben Pike, 1848-49; Winthrop 
Newton, 1850-51; Elisha Marks, 1852-54; Willis Webb, 1855: Timothy Beaman, 
1856; Loren Botsford, 1S57-58; Orson Beaman, 1859^-65; George B. Greene, 
1866; John Bush, 1867; George B. Greene, 1868; Ezra S. Goodspeed, 1S69; John 
P. Badger, 1870; George B. Greene, 1871; John P. Badger, 1872; Leonard Bush, 
1873; Andrew J. Day, 1874-75; George H. Jordan, 1876; Alfred C. Thayer. 
1877-78; William McKenzie, 1879; Albert A. Proctor, 1S80; William McKenzie, 
1881-85; Orville M. Everett, 1886-87; William McKenzie, 1888'-89; Orville M. 
Everett, 1S90-91; Alfred C. Morse, 1892-97; Henry H. Jones. 1S9S-1900; 
Charles F. Paine, 1901-03; Matthew Montgomery, 1904-06; Fred R. Badger, 
1907-10; Robert H. Weir, 1911; Fred R. Badger. 1912-14; Milton II. Brown. 
1915-18. 

The Presbyterian Church of Burke was organized June 26, 1845, as an olfshoot 
of the society of the same denomination in Chateaugay, of which it had been 
a part. It was incorporated January 30, 1860, as the First Congregational 
Society of Burke, with Julius C. Chipman, Orin Beaman, Alfred C. Morse, Eri 



800 ■ History of Franklin County 

Hill and Carlyle Morse as trustees. The church edifice was begun in 1850 and 
finished in 1853. It was improved in 1860 and again in 1S72. It 
was struck by lightning and burned June 22, 1901, and was replaced in 
1902. The form of organization was changed in 1875 from Congregational 
to Presbyterian. Pastors: A. M. Millar, 1843-49; E. B. Baxter, 1849- 
50; R. R. Deming, 1850-56; A. M. Millar, 1857-61; J. H. Beckwith, 
1862-63; A. M. Millar, 1864-96; P. A. Walker, 1896-1904; J. C. Langford, 
1905-06; E. C. Wiley, 1906-10; J. Bamford, 1911; R. McCord, 1911-13; J. 
Bamford, 1913-16; A. G. Howat, 1916-18. Present elders: F. B. Stanley 
M. Avery, C. F. Paine, W. S. Hill, Comer A. Brown. Trustees for 1918: H. A. 
Thompson, C. F. Paine and Eugene Jarvis. 

The Baptist Church; no record of incorporation except in connection with 
like society in Chateaugay. Erection of church edifice at Burke Center begun 
in 1S52, and was burned in 1855. Rebuilt between 1855 and 1859; sold to St. 
George's Church (R. C. ) in 1874, and new quarters provided at Thayer's Cor- 
ners. Later a store at this place was finished into a church and dedicated in 
1879. Pastors: L. W. Nichols, 1S48; J. A. Smith, 1853-58; L. S. Baker, 
1860; H. W. Hickok, 1862; "spiritually dead,' and no pastor, 1863-65; R. 
Jones, 1866-67; W. H. Dorwood, 186S; no reports, 1869-73; G. N. Harmon, 
1874-78; H. St. Clair, 1879; S. A. Read, 1882; D. W. Stoddard, 1884-85; none, 
1886-1901, when the society reported that it expected to give up. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of the Town of Burke incorporated March 
31, 1863, having previously been a part of Chateaugay charge. Lester Brown 
was then pastor, and the first trustees were: Theodorus Hewitt, David Crippin, 
Robert Oliver, Lathrop Morse, John W. March. The church edifice was erected 
in 1870, and remodeled in 1903. Pastors as assigned by conference: J. Dolph, 
1874; W. R. Helms, 1875-76; A. C. Danforth, 1877-79; M. R. Pier'ce, 18S0-S2; 
M. A. Cooper, 1S83; G. S. Hastings, 1884-85; William Thomas, 1886-87; Henry 
Hesselgrave, 1888-92; E. F. Felton, 1893-97; Joseph Lobb, 1898-1902; M. H. 
Dowd, 1903-04; T. A. Story, 1905-06; S. G. Carley, 1907-11; H. C. Campbell, 
1912-17; J. F. Day, 1918. Trustees for 1918: R. H. Weir, A. J. Pilling, 
Heman Hill, James Graham, Warren C. Mitchell. 

Methodist Episcopal Church of Covey town incorporated March 17, 1890, with 
Curtis Avery, George A. Friend, Joseph Lafleur, Joseph Smith, Hiram Avery 
and S. H. March as trustees. It is served by the same pastor as above church. 

Wesleyan Methodist Church of Bangor and Burke Circuit. Same as stated 
in Bangor, but is now a separate parish, with Carlos Hill as preacher. It has 
a chapel near Coveytown. 

North Burke and Chateaugay Wesleyan Methodist Church incorporated May 
22, 1872, with Nathan Hammond, Alvin Qua and David Adams as trustees. A 
church edifice was erected in 1875, and demolished by wind in 1888, when the 
organization was practically abandoned. 

St. George's Church (R. C), Burke, was founded by Rev. J. B. LeGrand of 
Malone and incorporated November 9, 1874, when Rev. Edmund DePauw of 
Chateaugay had become pastor. George Jordan and Edward Mallon were the 
first lay trustees. The Baptist Church edifice at the Center was purchased, 
remodeled in 1898 and abandoned in 1906, when a new house of worship was 



Appendix 801 

erected near the railroad station. Pastors: Edmund DePauw, J. J. Sherry, 
Charles Goulet, George Montreuil, A. J. Boulerice. From 1887 to 1918 St. 
George's and St. Francis' at Constable were combined as a single charge. In 
1918 each was made a separate charge, and Armand Uussault is the present 
rector. Lay trustees in 1918: Edward Yando and Thomas Callahan. 

Shiloh Lodge No. 750, I. O. O. F., organized April 16, 189(5, and has 68 
members. Officers for 1918: Rev. A. G. Howat, noble grand; Eugene N. Jarvis, 
vice-grand; Wilber Cook, treasurer; A. A. Lobdell, financial secretary, and Her- 
bert Smallman, secretary. 

Burke Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, organized in September, 1902, has 184 
members. Officers for 1918: A. J. Moe, master; William H. Goslaw, overseer; 
Mrs. Ida Stanley, lecturer; Henry A. Thompson, steward; Fred N. Finney, 
assistant steward; Fred B. Stanley, chaplain; E. L. Moe, treasurer; Mrs. Sadie 
Mason, secretary; William J. Layhon, gatekeeper; Mrs. William J. Layhon, 
Ceres; Mrs. Mary Brand, Flora; Mrs. A. J. Moe, Pomona; Mrs. Cora Finney, 
lady steward; William H. Goslaw, E. A. Mason and E. L. Moe, trustees. 

CHATEAUGAY. 

Supervisors.— Gates Hoit, 180S; William Bailey, 1S09; Gates Hoit, 1810; 
James Ormsbee, 1811; Sebius Fairman, 1812; Gates Hoit, 1813-21; George W. 
Douglass, 1822-23; Gideon Collins, 1824-25; Ira Smith, 1826; Gideon Collins, 
1827-28; Jacob Smith, 1829-31; John D. Miles, 1832; John Mitchell, 1833-36; 
Ezra Stiles, 1837-3S; Gideon Collins, 1839; John Mitchell, 1840-41; Henry B. 
Smith, 1842-43; Gideon Collins, 1844; Henry B. Smith, 1845-49; Jonathan 
Hoit, 1850; Henry B. Smith, 1851; Thomas Bennett, 1852-53; Alanson Green, 
1854; Hial S. Farnsworth, 1855; Henry B. Smith, 1856-58; John A. Sabin, 
1859-60; Henry B. Smith, 1861-62; Abel H. Miller, 1863; Nathan Beman, 
1804-65; Abel H. Miller, 1866-67; John Mullin, 186S; James Jordan, 1869-70; 
Clark A. Patterson, 1871-72; Artemas Earl, 1873-74; Ira Doud, 1875; Samuel 
S. Clark, 1S76-S0; Levi S. Peake, 1881; Bruce C. Bort, 1882^83; Adam Bennett, 
1884-85; Rodolphus W. Anderson, 1886-88; Nathan G. Douglas, 1889; R. W. 
Anderson, 1S90-91; James Kissane, 1S92-95; Edward L. Nolan, 1896-97; 
William B. Ryan, 1S98; William Johnston, Jr., 1899-1900; Charles C. Douglas, 
1901-05; George G. Bentley, 1906; Charles C. Douglas, 1907-OS; Nathan G. 
Douglas, 1909; Warren T. Thayer, 1910-12; Frank W. Hill, 1913-18. 

The First Presbyterian Church of the Town of Chateaugay incorporated 
March 10, 1834, with Augustus Douglass, Benjamin Miller, William V. Derby, 
Warren Botsford, Nelson Cook and Timothy Beaman as trustees; but the pres- 
ent church records (the originals for years prior to 1830 are lost) state that 
a Rev. Mr. Huntingdon, a Presbyterian, preached there in 1800 or 1801, and 
that he, Rev. Ashbel Parmelee and Rev. James Jordan were missionaries there 
from that time until 1822. A historical sermon by the pastor in 1S76 gives the 
date of actual organization as 1816, and the installation of the first pastor as 
1822. The church edifice was begun in 1828, but was not finished until 1842. 
It was unroofed by the tornado of 1856; at once repaired; improved in 1866; 
torn down in 1902 and a new building erected. Some time between 1816 and 
1842 it must have become Congregational, as in the hitter year the form of 

26 



802 History of Franklin County 

organization was changed to Presbyterian. Pastors: Jacob Hart, 1822-27 
Moses Parmelee, 1830-34; James Millar, 1835-42; A. M. Millar, 1843-48; E. B 
Baxter, 1849; A. M. Millar, 1850-61; J. H. Beckwith, 1862; John Turbit, 1863 
A. M. Millar, 1863-66; Simeon Gilbert, 1867-68; Thomas Thomson, 1868-69 
C. D. Flagler, 1870-73; James W. Grush, 1873-78; Henry T. Scholl, 1.878^70 
Augustus Frederick, 1879-83; C. C. Torrey, 1883-86; W. H. Miller, 18S6-87 
George A. Jamison, 1887-91; B. B. Seelye, 1891-93; W. H. Miller, 1893-99 
E. L. Tiffany, 1899-1900; Samuel Lundie, 1901-05; Samuel Riddagh, 1905-08 
A. V. S. Wallace, 1909-dl; Samuel Eaton, 1913-17; E. Turkington, 1917-18. 
The 1918 trustees are: T. Arthur Oliver and F. W. Campbell. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church in Chateaugay incorporated March 1, 
1859, with Oel Sunderlin, John Van Vechten and Albert L. Collins as trustees, 
but had been recognized by the conference continuously from 1831. Pastors: 
Lindon King, 1831; G. C. Woodruff, 1832; Joel J. Emmes and A. Yawger, 1833; 
Charles Dunning, 1834; James Erwin, 1835; L. D. Gibbs, 1S36; Allen Castle 
and C. Johnson, 1837; Allen Castle, 1838; H. O. Tilden, 1S39; Jehiel Austin, 
1840; Jehiel Austin and Henry G. Davis, 1841; Franklin Hawkins, 1842-43 
James H. Wilbur, 1S44; Ebenezer Pease, 1845-46; C. Johnson, 1847; J. N 
Brown, 1848; Alonzo A. Clark, 1849; Benjamin F. Brown and Alonzo Wells 
1S50; Benjamin F. Brown and a supply, 1851; D. Ferguson and J. Livingstone 
1852; D. Ferguson and a supply, 1853; W. H. Hawkins, 1854; J. B. Cocagne 
1855; Alonzo Wells, 1856-57; G. D. Greenleaf, 1858; S. C. Goodell, 1859-60 
Lester Brown, 1861-62; J. H. Merritt, 1863-64; E. Briggs, 1865-67; W. F. Hall 
1868-69; S. F. Kenyon, 1870-71; J. B. Hammond, 1872-74; L. L. Palmer 
1875-77; W. F. Ball, 1878-80; D. F. Pierce, 1881-83; A. D. Webster, 1884-86 
W. W. Van Dusen, 1S87-89; S. J. Greenfield, 1890-93; J. C. Culligan, 1893-94 
E. E. Cheeseman, 1895-97; George Sharpe, 1898-1901; D. C. Johnson, 1,902-04 
W. H. Baker, 1905; S. S. Cobb, 1906-07; E. M. Crandall, 1908-09; W. D 
Aubrey, 1910; G. H. Williams, 1911-12; A. F. Pennock, 1913-15; A. K. Jen 
nings, 1915-17; N. A. Darling, 1918. Present trustees: Alexander Farquhar 
A. A. Holcomb, M. S. Douglas, H. E. Whitehead, E. A. McCoy. The first church 
edifice was erected in 1854, and was badly damaged by the tornado in 1856. A 
new church was built in 1882. In 1850-52 Duane was included as part of 
Chateaugay charge, Bellmont in 1S55 and again from 1S70 to about 1S86, and 
the French mission in Dickinson and at other points 1855-57. Burke was 
included from earliest times until about 1870. 

First Baptist Society of the Town of Chateaugay incorporated November 22, 
1842, with Hiram Miner, Loren Botsford, Theodore T. S. Beman as trustees, 
but is understood to have been organized in 1817. Erection of a church building 
was begun on Depot street in 1820, but not finished until 1838. A new meeting 
house was built on Franklin street in 1858-59 and was sold in 1899, the society 
having been dying for twenty-five years or more. Pastors: L. W. Nichols, 
1848, the earliest record obtainable; J. A. Smith, 1853; E. Smith, 1854-55; 
E. Smith, 1857; J. A. and E. Smith, 1858-59; J. A. Smith, 1860-61; John Peddie, 
1863; F. E. Osborne and I. Van Buskirk, 1864; J. Mitchell, 1866; S. D. Moxley, 
1867; W. H. Dorwood, 1868; G. N. Harmon, 1874; S. A. Read, 1S82; D. W. 
Stoddard, 1884; no pastor after 1884, and members numbered only twelve to 
fifteen. 



Appendix 803 

St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church of Chateaugay incorporated August 10. 
1848, the parish having previously been attached to Hogansburgh. The first 
trustees were: Rev. Bernard MoCabe of Malone, pastor; Peter Mullin, John 
Hogan, Edward Lancto, George McCabe, Baligney Oligney, James Mahoney, 
Thomas Burke and Michael O'Neil. A church building was erected in is it 
through the efforts of Father Keveny and was utterly destroyed by the tornado 
of 1856. It was promptly replaced, but the new edifice was not finished until 
several years later. The parish was detached from Hogansburgh and joined to 
Malone in 1S49, and did not become independent until 1S03. Rectors: Edmond 
DePauw, 1S63-S9; P. J. Devlin, 1907; E. G. Brice, 1908-15; John J. Dean. 
1915-18. Formerly the parish included Burke, Ellenburgh and Cherubusco. 
The church was struck by lightning and burned July 12, 1916. The 1918 trus- 
tees are: James Hyland and T. J. Fitzpatrick. 

St. Peter's Church in the Town of Chateaugay incorporated September 3, 1849, 
with Carlisle T. Davidson and -Oel Sunderlin wardens, and Henry B. Smith, 
John Roberts, 4th, Theodoras Roberts, George W. Goodspeed, Truman C. Hall, 
Elisha B. Smith, Jehial Hall and Theodore Bem.an vestrymen. There had been 
as early as 1833 an attempt to organize an Episcopal mission, but the effort was 
given over in 1S39. Nor did St. Peter's continue longer than three or four 
years. 

St. John's Church in the Village of Chateaugay was organized in 1869, and 
in 1874 bought the school building on Church street and converted it into a 
house of worship. The organization was always small in numbers and weak in 
spirit. It was declared extinct in 1S91. 

Rainbow Lodge No. 206, F. and A. M., was chartered January 20, 1809, upon 
the application of eleven petitioners, the ink of whose signatures has so faded 
as to be undecipherable. The charter officers were: David Taylor, master; 
Joseph Ormsbee, senior warden, and Gates Hoit, junior warden. The warrant, 
books, jewels, etc., were surrendered May 9, 1S37. 

Frontier Lodge No. 517, F. and A. M., was chartered June 6, 1S02. The first 
officers were: John B. Bort, W. M. ; Ossian H. Stiles, S. W., and Oliver Smith. 
J. W. It has 135 members. Officers in 191S: Henry B. Smith. W. M.j J. 
Henry Gamble, S. W.; Charles C. Douglas, J. W.; H. E. Thompson, treasurer, 
and Henry H. Stephenson, secretary. 

Wadhams Council No. 469, Knights of Columbus, organized January 14, 1900, 
with fifty-three charter members; present membership, 230. Officers in 191S: 
James Hyland, grand knight; J. W. Duffy, deputy grand knight; D. A. Nolan, 
chancellor; John R. Fitzgerald, warden; W. L. English, financial secretary; 
Peter H. Powers, treasurer; W. S. McMillan, recorder; Charles Ledoux, inside 
guard; Edward Nolan, outside guard; T. J. Fitzpatrick, advocate; Rev. J. J. 
Dean, chaplain; E. W. Powers, lecturer; S. G. Lancto, Jerry Leary and Charles 
L. Sancomb, trustees. 

Chateaugay Grange No. 904, Patrons of Husbandry, organized January 31, 
1903, and its officers for 191S are: G. N. Stuart, master; John K. Earl, over- 
seer; Miss Myrtle E. MacDonald, lecturer; Gordon R. Green, steward: Walter 
Silver, assistant steward; Mrs. B. O. Reulston, chaplain; C. H. Green, treasurer; 
Mrs. T. J. Fitzpatrick, secretary; B. A. Bucklass, gatekeeper; Mrs. Minnie 



804 History of Franklin County 

Costello, Ceres; Miss Margaret Oassidy, Pomona; Mrs. Gladys Welch, Flora; 
Miss Dora Rankin, lady assistant steward. 

B. F. Roberts Post No. 576, G. A. R., organized in August, 1S85; name 
changed in 1890 to Admiral Bailey Post. It has fifteen members. Officers in 
1918: A. H. Rushford, commander; John Laclair, senior vice-commander; 
James N. Smith, junior vice-commander; John Meagher, quartermaster and 
adjutant; Calvin Prairie, officer of the day; William Coolidge, chaplain; Peter 
Ooopy, officer of the guard. 

CONSTABLE. 

Supervisors.— Albon Man, 1808-10; Seth Blanchard, 1811; Albon Man, 1812- 
13; Alric Man, 1814-23; Louis Dubois, 1S24-25; Guy Meigs, 1826; Ebenezer 
Man, 1827; Sylvester Langdon, 1828-31; James G. Dickey, 1S32; Sylvester 
Langdon, 1833; James G. Dickey, 1834-35; Harry Horton, 1836-37; Sylvester 
Langdon, 1838; Augustus Martin, 1839; George W. Darling, 1840-41; Putnam 
W. Sumner, 1842-43; Sidney W. Gillett, 1844-45; James G Dickey, 1846-47 
Washington Wooster, 1848; Lucius Wyman, 1849; William S. Daggett, 1850-51 
Joseph Hastings, 1852-53; James G. Dickey, 1854-55; Lucius Wyman, 1856-57 
Amander Beebee 1858; Elisha Hollister, 1859-60; Lyman J. Folsom, 1861-62 
Amander Beebee, 1863; Lucius Wyman, 1864-65; James G. Dickey, 1866 
Lyman J. Folsom, 1867; James G. Dickey, 1868; Lyman J. Folsom, 1869 
George D. Hastings, 1870-73; William Dempsey, 1874-79; James S. Dudley 
1880; J. Nelson Aubrey, 1881-85; William Dempsey, 1886-87; Edward A. Buell 
1888-91; Hubert H. Stickney, 1892-98; Fred A. Dudley, 1899-1900; Harvey J 
Dudley, 1901-03; Hubert H. Stickney, 1904-10; Thomas C. Lynch, 1911-14 
Frank R. Wilson, 1915-18. 

The First Congregational Society of the Town of Constable incorporated May 
21, 1817, through the efforts of Rev. Thomas Kennan, who is listed by the 
Champlain Presbytery as one of the two clergymen then in Franklin county. 
There had been preaching by Presbyterian ministers prior to 1817. The first 
trustees were: Solomon Wyman, Samuel Perkins, Alric Man, Oliver Bell and 
John Child. A church edifice was erected in 1844, and the form of organization 
changed in 1821 to Presbyterian, and in 1847 again to Congregational. Pastors: 
Jacob Hart, William Armstrong, Joseph Butler, John L. Edgerton, Tertius 
Reynolds, Aaron Foster, Bliss Burnap, Solomon Williams, Benjamin Marvin, 
Herman Riggs, Ashbel Parmelee, Smith P. Gamage, Archibald Fleming, Andrew 
M. Millar, Molton Clark, O. L. Cole, C. Hastings, B. B. Seelye, Simp- 
son, Charles Rice, J. J. Cameron, Frank Shepard, Benjamin James. The trus- 
tees for 1918 are: Fred Bell and A. E. Aubrey. 

A Baptist church is said to have been formed in 1833, but no records concern- 
ing it are to be found until it appears in the minutes of the St. Lawrence 
Baptist Association in 1853, when it reported fourteen members. Its highest 
number of members was twenty, in 1866. For years at a time there was no 
pastor, and the society reported that, while it held meetings regularly, it was a 
struggle to keep alive. The society never had a church building of its own. 
Pastors: Deacon S. Esterbrook, 1853; I. VanBuskirk, 1866; R. Jones and I. 
VanBuskirk, 1867; G. N. Harmon, 1874 and 1877-78. It made no report after 
1878. 



Appendix 805 

A Free Will Baptist Church was formed in 1841. its members residing in 
both Constable and Malone. It never had a church edifice, and the only pastor 
known was Elder Charles Bowles, a half-negro. The organization had only a 
short life. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Constable incorporated April 2% 
1S65, with Joseph Hastings, Aaron Stowers. Harvey Hastings, William Hooker 
and Amasa A. Rhoades as trustees, but Constable had been recognized by con- 
ference as a mission combined with Westville in 1836, and has so continued, 
but for a long time, without assignments of pastors. Pastors: Matthew Ben- 
nett, 1842; Hiram Woodruff, 1S43; Allen Miller, 1849-50; Alonzo Wells, 1854 
55; Stephen De La Meter, 1S56; A. S. Barter, 1857; W. S. (has.-, 1858; I.. 1'. 
Taft, 1S59; Alexander LeClair, 1860; Thomas Doty, 1861; J. H. Merritt, 1862 ; 
S. C. Wellington, 1863-64; Alonzo Wells, 1865-66; J. B. Hammond, 1867-tis , 
Alexander LeClair, 1S69; S. Short, 1870-71; 0. L. Cole, 1872-73; G. S. Hast- 
ings, 1874-75; E. H. Waugh, 1876; E. Will, 1877-78; W. F. Dillenbeck, 1879-80; 
H. O. Tilden, 1881-82; A. C. Eddy, 1883-85; W. O. Lent, 1886-87; J. J. Brock - 
enshire, 1890; John Bragg, 1891-92; O. M. Kelley, 1893-97; W. W. Clawson, 
1898; G. O. Fisher, 1899-1900; D. R. Smith, 1901-02; M. R. French, 1903-05; 
Alexander Scott, 1906-07; H. E. Davis, 1908-09; A. J. Green, 1910-11; C. M. 
Huyck, 1912-16; T. G. Gray, 1917-18. William Stebbins, George Cobb and 
F. R. Wilson are the trustees for 1918. 

A Methodist Episcopal Church was formed at Trout River about 1S60, and 
erected a church edifice a year or two later. It has always been served by the 
pastors at Constable. 

The Union Church Society of Trout River was informally organized in 1860. 
and erected a church building in 1861, but owing to denominational friction the 
building was never used for church purposes, nor was any pastor ever employed. 
The society incorporated November 7, 1892, with Melvin Martin. Jed L. Martin 
and Washington W. Warren as trustees, probably for the sole purpose of leasing 
the building, which is now a schoolhouse. 

St. Bridget's Church. Trout River, N. Y., incorporated March 28, 1885, though 
in fact organized in 1870, and was a mission under Father Sherry of Malone in 
1865. The church edifice was built in 1871. Lay trustees in 1885: Joseph 
Jameson and Samuel Burke. Rectors: Thomas Walsh, 1870; D. J. OTKeefe, 
1872-73; P. H. Ryan, 1872-73; C. F. Turgeon, 1873-88; Charles Goulet, C. J. 
McMorrow, J. J. Duffy and J. P. Proulx, each occasionally, 1888-91; A. Saurel, 
1891-97; J. L. Desjardins, 1897-99; J. Connor, 1900-07; B. J. McLaughlin, 
1907-12; J. Simard, 1912-18. 

St. Francis' Church at Constable incorporated September 9, 1872, with Her- 
bert Denizer and Moses Denizer as lay trustees, but actually founded by Father 
LeGrand of Malone a year or two earlier. The church building was erected in 
1872. For a year or two Constable and Trout River parishes were under the 
same priest. Rectors: Thomas Walsh, Charles Goulet, J. B. Arnolis, George 
Montreuil. A. J. Boulerice. From 1887 to 1918 this charge and St. George's at 
Burke were combined, but are now separate. Dominick Brault is the present 
rector. 

Constable Grange No. 1061, Patrons of Husbandry, organized in 1906. and has 
fifty-one members. Officers in 1918: D. C. Tuggey, master; E. W. Byington, 



806 History of Franklin County 

overseer; Fred Bell, secretary; Jessie Layhon, treasurer; John Devine, steward; 
John Lyons, assistant steward ; Lottie McCarthy, chaplain ; Sarah Byington, 
Ceres; Mrs. John Devine, Pomona; Jessie Estabrooks, Flora; Kate Lyons, lady 
assistant steward. 

DICKINSON. 

Supervisors.— Samuel Pease, 1809; Joseph Plumb, 1810-12; Jonathan Law- 
rence, 1S13-22; Jason Pierce, 1823; Jonathan Lawrence, 1824; Jason Pierce, 
1825-28; Loderick Butterfield, 1829-32; Erastus Hutchins, 1833-34; Reuben 
Cady, 1835; Erastus Hutchins, 1836-41; Warren Ives, 1842-43; Peter Whitney, 
1844-45; Warren Ives, 1846-52; Peter Whitney, 1853-54; Claudius Hutchins, 
1855-56; J. M. Beeman, 1857-59; Claudius Hutchins, 1860; William Dawson, 
1861-69; Anson Hutchins, 1870; William Dawson, 1871; Patrick Fleming, 1872; 
Anson Hutchins, 1873; Patrick Fleming, 1874-75; George W. Dustin, 1876-79; 
Watson Page, 1880-81; W. Nelson Tuttle, 1882-83; Watson Page, 1884; Den- 
nison Smith, 1885; Watson Page, 1886-88; Benjamin L. Orcutt, 1889-90; Anson 
Hutchins, 1891-93; Wellington Royce, 1894-95; Herbert N. Ramsdell, 1895- 
1908; Fred M. Orcutt, 1909-10; Willard J. Saunders, 1911-14; Herbert N. 
Ramsdell, 1915-18. 

The Christian Church at East Dickinson was formed in 1915 or 1916 by 
Elder James Spooner. The church edifice was built about 1860. The records 
are understood to have been lost by fire. Elder Haight was pastor for many 
years, and otherwise the church was served by the pastors of the Christian 
Church at Brushton. 

The Free Will Baptist Church at Dickinson Center was formed in 1835 by 
Elder Charles Bowles, with John Ramsdell as first deacon and Jesse Rice as 
clerk. The church building was erected 1860-62. Pastors: L. Squares, A. P. 
Walcott, S. Newell, Samuel Sweet, R. Parks, Nelson Ramsdell, E. B. Fuller, 
A. N. Woodward, C. Cook, J. B. Collins, Henry A. Reynolds, E. G. Blajsdell, J. 
H. Heath, John Lewis, C. A. Morehouse, A. Deering, W. S. Hathaway, Myra C. 
Hoy*, C. F. White, William Slocum, P. F. McClelland, Jno. Walker, P. S. 
Vining. Trustees for 1918: John Haskell, Noble Niles, Leon McComber. 

Baptist Church at Alburgh ; records lost; was organized prior to 1848. Its 
reports to the St. Lawrence Baptist Association show its largest number of mem- 
as thirty-five, in 1864, and pastors as follows: J. M. Beeman, 1853; J. M. 
Beeman and J. Pierce, 1S54; J. Pierce, Jr., 1855; J. Pierce, 1S56-57; J. M. 
Beeman, 185S; S. Pratt and J. Pierce, 1859; L. S. Baker, 1862; Elder Jones, 
from Nicholville, part of the time, 1863-64; G. N. Harmon, 1868; dropped in 
1873, and in 1877 advised to become a branch of the Lawrenceville church, sell 
the church building, and give proceeds to the church at Burke. The church has 
been used only occasionally since 1878. It was built about 1860. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Dickinson Center was not incorpo- 
rated until June 22, 1867, when Peter Whitney. Henry Foster, Asahel Dewey, 
A. F. Bigelow and Henry Hartson were made trustees; but the conference had 
recognized it as a parish from 1851, joining it with Duane 1853-54, with 
Nicholville in 1885 and with St. Regis Falls from 1887. The church building 
was erected in 1872. Pastors: J. Delarme, 1851; Allen Miller, 1852-53; C. N. 
Bowen, 1854; A. S. Barter and S. C. Goodell, 1855; James B. Barnes, 1856; 



Appendix 807 

A. C. Danforth, 1857-59; W. S. Chase, 1859-60; A. Shaw, 1860; Daniel S. 
Robbins, 1861-62; S. F. Danforth, 1863; A. F. Bigelow, 1863; A. Wells, 1864; 
C. Mott, 1865; 0. L. Cole, 1866; Allen Miller, 1867; M. Taylor and 0. L. Cole, 
1868; S. C. Goodell, 1869; A. C. Danforth, 1S70-72; 0. F. Nichols, 1873; D. F. 
Pierce, 1874-76; W. H. Kanoff, 1877; Isaac E. Wright, 1878; Charles Dubois, 
1879; H. 0. Tilden, 1880; A. C. Danforth, 1881; W. H. Sommers, 1882-83; J. W. 
Runion, 1884; Frank L. Howard, 1884; Alonzo Wells, 1885; W. R. Helms, 
1885-86; J. P. Dunham, 1887-8S ; C. W. Hardendorf, 1889-90; Davis Gardiner, 
1891-93; Samuel Short, 1S94-97; O. M. Kelley, 1898-99; William Thomas, 
1900-04; C. M. Smith, 1905-08; R. F. Bayliss, 1909-10; X. A. Darling, 1911-17; 
A. F. Pennock, 1918. Trustees for 1918: B. L. Orcutt, Herbert Clark, M. A. 
Labounty, N. C. Aiken, John Marsh. 

First French Methodist Episcopal Church, Dickinson, incorporated May 15, 
1852, but created by conference in 1S49 as the headquarters of the St. Lawrence 
French mission. Trustees in 1852: Charles Patraw, Wallace Demo and Zebulon 
Patraw. The first meetings were held at the residence of Alexander Tremblee, 
but in 1S54 a chapel was erected near Alburgh, which is now a dwelling house. 
The mission continued for about twenty years. Pastors so far as known: 
James Delarme, Michael Taylor, A. LeClair, J. B. Cocagne, A. F. Bigelow and 
Allen Miller. 

Mormonism ; no local organization, but emissaries from Nauvoo, 111., prose- 
lyted in Dickinson in 1843, and made some converts. 

Seventh Day Adventist Church of Dickinson Center, N. Y.. incorporated Jan- 
uary 14, 1895, with S. M. Cobb, George Davidson and E. E. Bates trustees, but 
organized three or four years earlier. Church edifice erected before 1895. It 
was sold to the grange in 1913, when the church was practically out of 
existence. 

D. Robbins Post No. 462, G. A. R., organized in January, 188S, with fifteen 
charter members. First officers: R. P. Lindsay, commander; Luther Maxam, 
senior vice-commander ; Lyndon Young, junior vice-commander, E. E. Bates, 
officer of the day; S. W. Gleason, adjutant; William N. Tuttle, quartermaster; 
William Morrill, surgeon. The charter was surrendered in April, 1908. 

Adirondack Grange No. 1019, Patrons of Husbandry, has 112 members. Offi- 
cers 1918: John Marsh, master; Milton Ross, overseer; N. C. Aiken, secretary; 
M. T. Ross, treasurer. 

DUANE. 

Supervisors. — James Duane, 1828-47; Ezekiel Ladd, 1848; James Duane, 
1849-55; Hugh McDonald, 1856; James M. Wardner, 1857-5S; William C. 
Duane, 1859-63; George W. McNeil, 1S64-65; William C. Duane, 1866-73; 
Mordecai Ladd, 1874-75; Alonzo R. Fuller, 1876; Henry Woodford, 1877; Fred 
O'Neil, 1878-87; Alonzo R. Fuller, 18S8-97; William Sprague, 189S-1912; Floyd 
R. Selkirk, 1913-18. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of the Town of Duane and Township 
Number Nine of the Town of Malone was incorporated January 10, 1861, with 
Sherman Stancliff, Norman L. Knights, Charles Trask, Thomas Harris and 
Randall H. Westcott as trustees, and June 28, 1886, the Methodisi Kpiscopal 
Church of the Town of Duane incorporated, with Fred O'Neil, William H. 



808 History or Franklin County 

Sprague and Cassius 0. Hoose as trustees. The first services by Methodist 
clergy held in Duane, so far as known, were conducted in 1839 by Rev. Jehiel 
Austin, who was located at Merrillsville; then, between 1839 and 1841, by 
John Adams, a local preacher, and again in 1814 by a Mr. Parish from Merrills- 
ville. In 1849 Rev. Ebenezer Arnold preached each week, and in 1850 South 
Malone and Duane combined were made a mission and attached to Chateaugay. 
In 1855 these charges were united with Dickinson, and in 1867 they were made 
a charge by themselves. The church building in Duane was erected in 1883. 
Pastors: Ebenezer Arnold, 1S49; B. F. Brown and A. Wells, 1S50-52; Allen 
Miller and C. N. Brown, 1853-54; Charles M. Bowen, 1S54-59, with Samuel 
Saulsbury, Mr. Northup and M. Castle also officiating a part of the time; A. S. 
Barter, 1859; O. Mott, 1860-64; Allen Miller, 1S65-66; and from that date 
same as at Chasm Falls, which see. 

FORT COVINGTON. 

Supervisors. — Sebius Fairman, 1817-18; Isaac Fairchild, 1819; Sebius Fair- 
man, 1820-22; George B. R. Gove, 1823; William Hogan, 1824-25; George B. R. 
Gove, 1826-27; William Hogan, 1828-30; and James B. Spencer, to fill vacancy, 

1S30; , 1831; Wilson Randall, 1S32; George B. R. Gove, 

1833; Uriah D. Meeker, 1834; Henry Longley, 1835; Tilness Briggs, 1836-37; 
James Campbell, 1838; G. B. R. Gove, 1S39; Jonathan Wallace, 1840; Sidney 
Briggs, 1841-42; James Campbell, 1S43; Sidney Briggs, 1844-45; Warren L. 
Manning, 1S46-47; Schuyler Button, 184S; W. L. Manning, 1849; Stephen V. R. 
Tuthill, 1850; Jonathan Wallace, 1851; Preserved Ware, 1852; Chandler Ells- 
worth, 1853-54; Tilness Briggs, 1855; Preserved Ware, 1856; William Hogle, 
1857-58; Henry A. Paddock, 1859; William Gillis, 1860; James W. Kimball, 
1861-65; John S. Parker, 1866; William Gillis, 1867-72; John S. Parker, 1873; 
Thomas W. Creed, 1874-75; William Gillis, 1876; Hiram N. Burns. 1877; 
Thomas Parker, 1878-79; James Y, Cameron, 18S0-83; Almerin W. Merrick, 
1884-85; George S. Henry, 1S86-8S; Allen S. Matthews, 1889-91; Hiram N. 
Burns, 1892; William Gillis, 1893; Garret W. Hart, 1894-95; James N". Mac- 
Artney, 1896-1912; George F. Donahue, 1913-18. 

The First Presbyterian Church organized as United Presbyterian, February 
28, 1827, with David L. Seymour, Charles Marsh, Parret Blaisdell, Jabez Park- 
hurst, Samuel Hoard and Aretus Hitchcock as trustees. The form of organiza- 
tion was changed within a year to Presbyterian. This organization had been 
preceded by an Associated Reformed Scotch church, and then by a Congregational 
society, both of which were of short life. A church edifice was erected prior 
to August, 1829, said to have been modeled after St. Paul's in London, and 
was rebuilt and enlarged in 1866. Pastors or stated supply: John A. Savage, 
1827-32; James George, 1832-33; Aaron Foster, 1833-36; James Qua, 1836-3S; 

P. Wells, 1838-41; Solomon Williams, 1841-43; Russell, 1843-45; 

D. C. Lyon, 1845-47; Charles Gillette, 184S-59; Moses Thatcher, 1859-61; 
Andrew M. Millar, 1861-62; Chandler ,N. Thomas, 1865-82; Daniel Maclay, 
1883-90; John H. Gardiner, 1892-1918. Trustees in 1915 were Allen McElwain, 
James R. Farlinger, William McElwain, John Will. The members number 105. 

The First Baptist Church of Fort Covington organized in 1821 or 1822, but 



Appendix 809 

was not incorporated until January 31, 1857, with William Hogle, George B. 
R. Gove, John A. Quaw, Peter Dunn and Henry A. Paddock aa trustees. Church 
edifice erected in 1S2S and dedicated March 5, 1829. Pastors: Nathaniel Colver. 
1821-29; H. Safford, 1829-30; Elder Dodge, 1836; W. II. Rice, 1839 13; J. B. 
Drummond, 1843-44; L. Humphrey, 1848; J. B. Drummond, 1848 51; Elders 
Nichols, Humphrey and others as supply, 1851-52; .1. N. Webb, 1853-64; \Y. II. 
Maynard, 1864-66; H. C. Woods, 1S66; I. VanBuskirk. 1867; J, E. Austermell, 
1868-70; C. D. Fuller, 1870-71; Chas. Coon, 1S72; Charles Bailey, 1875 79; 
John B. Nairn, 1879-S0; A. H. Stock, 18S0-81 ; Francis K. Townsley, 18811; 
W. McGregor, 1886-SS; F. E. Dayton, 18S9; F. G. Broughton, 1896; C. H. 
Williams, 1897-98; C. L. Herrick, 1900-03; J. B. Lehigh, 1903-05; L. A. Cum 
mins, 1905-07; Samuel C. Welch, 1908-11. The society was strongest in 1860- 
63, when it had 134 to 140 members. At a number of times the pastorate was 
vacant for several years. There has been no pastor since 1911. and practically 
the only life shown by the organization is an occasional meeting of the woman's 
missionary society. Deaths and removals have been so many that little hope 
is held for reviving church activity. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Society in Fort Covington was incorporated 
December 11, 1838, with David Rich, Humphrey Russell and Ralph D. Ellsworth 
as trustees, though conference appointment of pastors began in 1830. A church 
edifice was begun in 183S. List of pastors: L. K. Redington and John Lowry, 
1830; Godfrey W. Barney and Alban H. Smith. 1831; Harvey VanOrder, 1832; 
A. E. Munson and H. Graves, 1834; W. C. Mason and B. F. Brown. 1835; 
G. Sawyer. 1836; P. D. Gorrie. 1837; A. J. Phelps, 1S38; John Sawyer. is:i<i-4i) : 
Joseph Kilpatrick, 1841; C. H. Austin, 1S42-43; Matthew Bennett and Andrew 
F. Bigelow, 1844; Matthew Bennett and E. Smith, 1845; Elijah Smith. 1846; 
1847, supplied; Morgan D. Gillett, 1848-49; Jackson D. Vanderhook. 1850-51; 
Wm. H. Hawkins, 1S52-53; J. L. Humphrey, 1854-55; Elisha Wheeler. 1856-57; 
D. D. Parker. 1858; D. W. Thomas, 1S59; M. M. Rice, 1860-61; A. E. Corse, 
1862-63; A. Bramley, 1864-65; Chas. Manson, 1S66-67; E. Briggs, lsr,S-69: 
J. H. Merritt, 1870; John Dolph, 1871-72; T. P. Bradshaw. 1873-74: E. E. Kel- 
logg, 1875-76; W. R. Helms, 1877-79; H. W. P. Allen. 1880-81; T. P. Bradshaw. 
1882-S3; W. F. Ball, 1884; Reuben Sherman, 1885-S6: S. J. Greenfield, 1887-89: 
W. E. Reynolds, 1890; M. W. Howard, 1S91-92; J. M. Thomas. 1893-95; G. II. 
Williams, 1896-1901; W. H. English, 1902-06; J. G. Benson, 1907-1.°.; H. E. Fades. 
1914-16; Philip Tonkin, 1917-18. According to the local church records Bombay 
was a part of Fort Covington charge in 1844-45, in 1S66-72. and again in 1S77- 
1901, and Westville in 1S75. In 1S32 the church reported to the conference that 
it had 366 members and in 1836 there were 284, which had decreased to 86 
in 1838, and is now 57. The trustees for 1918 are H. W. Merrick, M. P. 
Merrick, J. J. Merrick, Geo. F. Donahue, W. S. II. Keefe. Fred Reynolds. 
M. E. Shoen, Geo. S. Henry and William Smith. 

The Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary's at Fort Covington incorporated 
March 25, 1840, with Father McNulty of Hogansburgh presiding, and with 
William Leahy and Patrick Holden of Fort Covington and Michael Collins of 
Bombay as trustees, though the records of the church itself list the truste 
Wm. Leahy, Wm. McKenna, Michael Caldwell. James Fitzgerald. Michael 
Murphy, Hugh Laffey and Austin McDonald, and fix the date of organization 



810 History of Franklin County 

and of the erection of the church edifice as 1837. Became an independent charge 

in 1869. Rectors: M. C. Stanton, 1869-73; Thomas McNally, 1873-81 ; 

Guilbault, 1881-82; Denis Nolan, 1882-83; C. J. McMorrow, 1883-93; James 

McGowan, 1893-1910, with James J. McGowan in charge 1908-10; 

Pontur, 1910; J. L. Desjardins, 1911-18. There are 290 families, numbering 
1,213 persons, in the parish. Present lay trustees: Bernard Smith and Levi 
Derocher. 

St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church; the first known services were held 
by Eleazer Williams from Hogansburgh, though it is conjectured that army 
chaplains of the Episcopalian church may have officiated during the war of 
1812. No services were held between Mr. Williams's time and 1870, when 
Wm. Stone Hayward, located at Hogansburgh, visited the place occasionally. 
Other rectors include Wilfred H. Dean, David Jenkins, W. J. Hamilton, Fred- 
erick Thompson, S. R. McEwan, A. Elliott, Fred Swindlehurst and W. Howard 
Mills; divinity students from Montreal have officiated from time to time. 
J. A. Adkins is now in charge. The services by Mr. Williams were held in 
the old town hall, and between 1S70 and 1898 the church occupied Masonic Hall 
and the Baptist church. St. Paul's church edifice was erected in 1898. 

Aurora Lodge No. 383, F. and A. M., organized in 1855, and has seventy-eight 
members. The officers for 1918 are: Glenn A. Sealy, W. M. ; James M. Hall, 
S. W. ; Earl W. Scripter, J. W. ; James Costello, S. D. ; William Fraser, J. D. ; 
Thomas Vass, secretary; James Farquhar, treasurer. 

FRANKLIN. 

Supervisors.— Harry B. Hatch, 1836-38; Norman Stickney, 1839-40; William 
Knowles, 1841; John R. Merrill, 1842; Harry B. Hatch, 1843-44; ' John R. 
Merrill, 1845; Norman Stickney, 1846; John R. Merrill, 1847-50; Hugh Martin, 
1851; John B. Dickinson, 1852; John R. Merrill, 1853; Hugh Martin, 1854-55; 
George Tremble, 1856-59; Luther S. Bryant, 1860-61; George Tremble, 1862-63; 
Chauncey Williamson, 1S64-65; George Tremble, 1866; James H. Pierce, 1867; 
George Tremble, 1869-70; Patrick McKillip, 1871-72; James H. Pierce, 1873; 
Patrick McKillip, 1874; James H. Pierce, 1875-76; Patrick McKillip, 1877; 
George Tremble, 1878-79; John P. Mulligan, 1880-81; Norman I. Arnold, 
1882-83; Henry H. Martin, 1884-85; Frank G. Tremble, 1886; Henry H. Martin, 
1887-S8; John P. Mulligan, 1S89-91; James W. Littlejohn, 1892; Timothy O. 
Howard, 1893-95; Hugh McKillip, 1896-97; James W. Littlejohn, 1898-1900; 
Hugh P. McKillip, 1901-08; Edward St. Clair, 1909-12; Wesley C. Fadden, 
1913-18. 

HARRIETSTOWN. 

Supei-visors. — Pliny Miller, 1S41-44; Alanson B. Neal, 1845; Pliny Miller, 
1846-50; Alanson B. Neal, 1S51-52; William F. Martin, 1853: Virgil C. Bart- 
lett, 1854; Alanson B. Neal, 1855-56; William F. Martin, 1857-58; Leonard 
Nokes, 1859; Alanson B. Neal, 1S60; Leonard Nokes, 1861-62; Orlando Blood, 
1863-65; Van Buren Miller, 1866-73; Milo B. Miller, 1874-75; William F. 
Martin, 1876-78; Van Buren Miller, 1879-82; R. Eugene Woodruff, 1883; 
J. Herbert Miller, 1884-86; F. M. Bull, 1887; J. Herbert Miller, 1888-89; 



Appendix 811 

Alonzo Dudley, 1890; John Harding, 1891; Richard Mclntyre, 1892-95; Frank 
E. Kendall, 1896-97; William A. Walton, 1S98-1900; John Harding, 1901-03; 
Euclid C. Pine, 1904-08; James A. Latour, 1909-15; William H. Moore, 1915-18. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Saranac Lake, N. Y., incorporated July 8, 
1878, with Robert Smith, Horace Morehouse, Jas. A. Filbrooks, Augustus Tor- 
rence and Carlos White as trustees, and for some reason reincorporated August 
16, 1897, as the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Saranac Lake, N. Y., 
with H. H. Miner, W. J. Slater, R. S. Smith, H. L. Lobdell, Almon Chappell 
and J. H. Williams as trustees. From 1S71 to 1S76 Saranac Lake and North 
Elba were joined as one parish. Church edifice erected at Saranac Lake 1882-86. 
List of pastors: A. O. Spoor, 1876; J. W. Coons, 1877; Orlo Thompson, 1879- 
80; .0. M. Boutwell, 1884; C. P. Annibal, 1886-90; A. M. Woodruff, 1891-95; 
Clarence Miller, 1896-97; D. N. Cochran, 1S9S-99; L. A. Bigelow, 1900-04; 
G. W. Easton, 1905-07; G. P. Love, 1908-11; M. H. Smith, 1912-14; J. M. Cass, 
1915-17; Alexander McKinley, 1917-18. Trustees in 1918: B. R. Moody, 
W. B. Scott, H. L. Lobdell, H. H. Miner and John A. Ling. 

The Church of St. Luke the Beloved Physician organized in 1877, but not 
incorporated until May 7, 1903, with Arthur Moir and Edward L. Trudeau 
as wardens, and Edward L. Trudeau, Jr., Stanley Appleyard, Chas. H. Jenkins, 
Carl Gordon, Ellwood Wilson and John Harding, vestrymen. Church edifice 
erected in 1879. List of rectors: John P. Lundy, D. D., 1877-78; Chas. S. 
Knapp, D. D., 1879; A. H. Locke, 1880-81; Daniel M. Bates, 1S83-85; Milton 
C. Potter, 18S6-89; Walter H. Larom, 1889-1909; Wm. B. Lusk, 1909-15; 
Scott Kidder, D. D., 1915-17; Elmer P. Miller, 1917-18. Wardens in 1918: 
Arthur D. Manning and Dr. J. Woods Price. Vestrymen in 1918: C. J. Stick- 
ney, Seaver A. Miller, Stanley Appleyard, Dr. Robert C. Paterson, Dr. Francis 
B. Trudeau and Walter H. Cluett. 

First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake organized as a mission in 1890 
and incorporated March 10, 1891, with James Sheffield, Frank Lattrell and 
Wm. F. Roberts as trustees. Church edifice erected in 1891. List of pastors or 
stated supply; Richard G. McCarthy, 1890-93; Henry A. Lewis, 1893-94; 
W. Armitage Beardsley, 1894-97; William Tatlock, 1897-1902; Edwin H. 
Dickinson, 1902-03; John Bailey Kelly, 1903-08; George Roberts, Jr., 1909-15; 
Roy B. Chamberlin, 1915-17, now on leave of absence in Y. M. C. A. work in 
France, and George K. Newell acting as supply. Present trustees: Dr. E. R. 
Baldwin, Dr. H. M. Kinghorn, Dr. C. A. McAfee, Geo. F. Schrader and Duncan 
Paul. Elders: Frank E. Lattrell, S. C. Blauvelt, H. S. Horton, C. W. Parks 
and W. F. Roberts. 

Saint Bernard's Church, Saranac Lake, incorporated in September, 1888, with 
John Meagher and Michael Carey lay trustees. Father Michael Charbonneau 
and Father James J. McCarthy had officiated earlier in the parish, but Father 
John J. Walters was the first appointed rector, in 1890, and lias served con- 
tinuously since. A church edifice was erected in 1892, and was burned in 
1909. The present church edifice, three years in the course of construction, 
was finished in 1912. Present lay trustees: Cornelius J. Carey and William J. 
Munn. 

The Church of St. John in the Wilderness organized in 1906, with Father 
J. A. Hervieux in charge, and incorporated May S, 1910, with Edward Patnode 



812 History of Franklin County 

and Henry F. Ryon as lay trustees. Father Emile Berard was then the rector, 
and so continues. Present trustees: Edward J. Patnode and James Betters. 

MALONE. 

Supennsors. — Nathaniel Blanchard, 180S; Asa Wheeler, 1809; Hiram Horton. 
1810; Asa Wheeler, 1811; George F. Harison, 1812; Harry S. House, 1813-15; 
Abel Willson, 1S16-17; Asa Hascall, 1818-35; Martin L. Parlin, 1836; Asa 
Hascall, 1837; Jonathan Stearns, 1838-39; Asa Hascall, 1840-42; Hiram Horton, 
2d, 1843-45; William Andrus, 1846-52; Henry S. Brewster, 1853; Thomas R. 
Powell, 1854; Daniel N. Huntington, 1855-56; William Andrus, 1857-59; Edwin 
L. Meigs, 1860; Albert Hobbs, 1861-62; William W. King, 1863; William 
Andrus, 1864-70; Howard E. King, 1871-79; Albert Hobbs, 1880-82; Daniel H. 
Stanton, 1883-85; George G. Gurley, 18S6-90; Dwight Dickinson, 1891-93; 
Thomas Adams, 1894-96; Orrin S. Lawrence, 1897-1902; John C. Williamson, 
1903-10; Stephen M. Howard, 1911-18. 

The First Congregational Church and Society was organized May 10, 1807, 
but no certificate of incorporation having been recorded in the county clerk's 
office, and the earliest church records not being accessible, the names of the 
first trustees are not ascertainable. From 1807 to 1809 there do not appear 
to have been regular pastors, though a Mr. Robinson, Holland Wicks and Simeon 
Parmelee each served for short periods. The earliest services were held in the 
dwelling of Noah Moody, and then in the academy and in the court house. 
A church edifice was erected in 1826; a second in 1852; and a third in 1S83. 
The pastors since 1810 have been: Ashbel Parmelee, 1809-1845; Silas R. Wood- 
ruff, 1S45-53; John R. Herrick, 1854-67; Charles H. A. Bulkley, 1868-74; 
Charles S. Richardson, 1875-88; George F. Chipperfield, 1S8S-97; John A. 
Macintosh, 1897-1912; John R. Duffield, 1912-1918. The trustees in 1918 are 
N. W. Porter, G. S. Howard, C. M. Redfield, G. M. Lincoln, E. C. Lawrence, 
G. C. Dewey, Mrs. C. W. Breed, John H. King and Willard H. Ames. The church 
has 375 members. 

The First Baptist Church and Society of the Town of Malone was organized 
December 12, 1S07, but not incorporated until September 28, 1831, when Asaph 
Watkins, Asa Hascall and Nahum Whipple were chosen trustees. The first 
services must have been held in school houses or private residences, and were 
then held in the court house. A church edifice was erected in 1833, and a 
second in 1874. There are no records of date earlier than 1825, since when the 

pastors have been: Nathaniel Colver, 1825-27; Smith, 1S27; Hiram 

Safford, 1829-30; Samuel Marshall, 1830-34; . Anthony Case, 1836-45; J. M. 

Beman, 1846-49; O. W. Babcock, 1849-54; L. M. Woodruff, 1855-56; 

Decker, 1857-58; L. M. Woodruff, 1858-61; W. C. Hubbard, 1861; John Peddie, 
1862; Thomas Cull, 1863-66; William H. Maynard. 1866-69; Henry F. Lane. 
1869-77; S. T. Farnhani, 1877-82; J. W. Ashworth, 1882-87; Philip B. Strong, 
1887-92; E. J. Farley, 1893-96; T. G. Cass, 1S96-1902; W. C. Carr, 1902-06; 
Roscoe C. Penney, 1906-10; J. Burt Webster, 1910-17; Ivan M. Rose, 1918. 
The trustees for 19 IS are Wm. P. Badger, Fred A. Hutchins, Thomas Cantwell, 
Frank Mason, Fred A. Cameron, Floyd Spencer, Samuel C. Coleman, Karl Wal- 
bridge and Orla C. Potter. 



Appendix 813 

The Malone Methodist Episcopal Church was incorporated May 2, 1S35, with 
Thomas J. Paddock, Stephen Paddock, Isaac Holden, John Wiley and John F. 
Dimick as trustees. The exact date of the founding of the church there are 
no records to show, hut it certainly was as early as 18 IS, and may have been 
in 1811. In the early years its services were held in the court house and 
perhaps occasionally in private dwellings. Its first house of worship was built 
between 1835 and 1838, and its second in 1S66, and the name was changed in 
187S to Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church of Malone. It has had pastors 
continuously since 1818 as follows: Chas. Northrop, 1818-19; William Jones, 
1820; Truman Dixon, 1821; Alex. Irwin, 1822-23; Rosw'ell Parker and Hiram 
May, 1824; Isaac Smith and Wm. J. Lull, 1S25; 1826, supplied; Jonathan M. 
Brooks and Luther Lee, 1S27; Luther Lee, 1S2S; G. W. Barney and H. Van 
Order, 1S29; G. W. Barney and D. King, 1830; Geo. Woodruff and .J. Lowry, 
1831; S. Paddock and J. Lowry, 1832; W. C. Mason, 1833; W. C. Mason and 
0. Squires, 1834; C. L. Dunning, 1835-36; G. Sawyer, 1837-38; L. L. Adkins, 
1839; Jas. E. Downing, 1840-41; Almanzo Blackman, 1842-43; Chas. H. Austin, 
1844-45; M. D. Gillett, 1846^7; Ebenezer Arnold, 184S; E. Smith, 184&; 
Royal Stratton, 1850-51; T. W. Thurston, 1852; J. T. Allen, 1853; F. A. O'Far- 
rell, 1854-55; Jas. L. Humphrey, 1856; A. F. Bigelow, 1S57; M. M. Rice. 1858-59; 
Hiram Shepard, 1S60-61; F. F. Jewell, 1862-63; A. E. Corse, 1864-65; Samuel 
Call, 1866-68; A. Bramley, 1869-71; J. C. Stewart, 1872-73; F. H. Beck, 1S74; 
A. L. Smalley, 1875-77; C. H. Guile, 1878-79; L. L. Palmer, 1880-81; W. F. 
Tooke, 1882-84; I. D. Peaslee, 1885-87; W. D. Marsh, 1888-92; C. C. Townsend, 
1893-97; H. E. Waugh, 189S-99; J. H. Myers, 1900-05; M. D. Sill, 1906-11; 
E. H. Joy, 1912-16; C. M. Gearhart, 1916-18. The trustees in 1918 are A. C. 
Allison, Geo. D. Northridge, Albert E. Hyde, V. E. Maher and H. F. Perkins. 
The church has about 600 members. 

St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church was founded September 22, 1S31, at 
a meeting held at the court house, with Luther Bradish and James Duane as 
wardens, and Wm. Hogan, Ransom Hawley, John Smith, Roswell Green, John 
G. Clayton, Henry B. Titus, Lucius King and Joseph H. Jackson as vestrymen. 
Services were held for a number of years at the court house and in the Arsenal 
Green school house (now the church of the Christian Scientists). A church 
edifice was erected between 1843 and 1S46, and was replaced by the present 
structure in 1884. There were a number of years in the early life of the parish 
when there was no rector, but the list of those who have been rectors so far as 
known is: Anson B. Hard, 1831-33; Amos Pardee, 1834-39, with an intermis- 
sion of two years; Alex. H. Cull, 1839-40; H. S. Atwater, 1846-49; Wm. Long, 
1849-51; Jubal Hedges, 1851; Amos C. Treadway, 1852-59; John Gribble, 1859- 
61; James A. Upjohn, 1861-62; Charles F. Robertson, 1S62-0S; Jas. W. Stewart, 
1868-72; John B. Pitman, 1872-S3; W. G. W. Lewis, 1883-88; Charles Temple, 
1888-96; W. P. R. Lewis, 1896-9S; A. C. Wilson, 1898-1901; J. H. Brown, 
1901-08; H. A. Barrett, 1908-17; W. W. Silliman, 1917-18. John W. Fay and 
William L. Allen are the wardens for 1918, and John P. Badger, John A. 
Flanagan, A. G. Wilding, James R. Jones, F. R. Kirk, Frederick H. Bryant, 
C. A. Massey and E. W. Knowlton the vestrymen. The members number 125. 

The Roman Catholic Church and Society of the Town of Malone was incor- 



814 History of Franklin County 

porated July 20, 1S39, with Barney Mallon, Michael Cowan and Richard Dorsey 
as lay trustees, though Malone was at the time a part of the Hogansburgh 
parish, and was served for several years by priests from that place. The first 
service was held in a private house near the poor house. A church edifice was 
erected in 1836, and the church became an independent charge in 1849, when 
it included all of the county except Bombay and Fort Covington. A certificate 
filed in the county clerk's office in 1861 made the name of the organization 
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church of the Town of Malone. A new church 
building was begun in 1862, which was burned in 1870, and when partly 
replaced was unroofed and two of the walls wrecked by a wind. The rectors 
since the parish became independent have been Bernard E. McCabe, 1849-57; 
Anthony Theves, 1858-62; Francis E. Van Compenholdt, 1862-67; Patrick 
Ludden, 1867; James J. Sherry, 1867-77; William Rossiter, 1877-1908; John H. 
O'Rourke, 1908-18. The present lay trustees are Hugh H. Mullarney and Frank 
Clark. The parish contains 325 families. 

The First Universalist Society of Malone was incorporated May 12, 1846, 
though apparently an unorganized society had existed from 1835, but as to 
which no definite data are available. The first trustees at the incorporation 
were Lauriston Amsden, Benj. W. Clark and Martin L. Parlin. A church edifice 
was erected in 1846. For considerable periods the society had no regular pastor, 
and was served occasionally by students from St. Lawrence University at Canton. 
No complete list of those who so served, nor even of the regular pastors, is now 
obtainable, but the number included Herman Bisbee, A. B. Hervey ( afterward 
president of St. Lawrence University), E. A. Holbrook, J. A. Seitz, J. S. Cantwell, 

J. 0. Skinner, Doctor Gunnison, Perry and Joseph Crehore. Services 

ceased to be held in 1884, and in 1S92 the society was dissolved, its property 
sold and the proceeds donated to St. Lawrence University. , 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of the Town of Duane and Township 
Number Nine of the Town of Malone was incorporated in 1861, but had been 
in unorganized existence from 1843 or earlier, and supplied almost regularly 
with preaching from 1849. For a part of the time it was joined with the 
Chateaugay circuit, and then with Dickinson. The first services were in a 
building known as The Temple, erected for both school and church uses, and next 
in a log chapel. The present church edifice was built in 1867. The trustees at 
incorporation were Sherman Stancliff, Norman L. Knights, Charles Trask and 
Randall H. Westcott; and those for 1918 are Henry Childs, William M. Wes- 
cott and Dr. Watson H. Harwood. Duane and Owl's Head are joined with 
Chasm Falls as one parish. Chasm Falls has had pastors as follows: Allen 

Miller, 1853-54; Northrup, 1855; Samuel Saulsbury, 1856; Chas. M. 

Brown, 1857; M. Castle, 1857-58; A. S. Barter, 1S59; Porter, 1860; 

W. Mooney, N. L. Knights, Ira Wescott, 1861-63; Chas. Mott, 1864; Allen 
Miller, 1865-66; Alonzo Wells, 1S67-69; Chas. Brown, 1S70; R. F. Whipple, 
1871; Alex. LaClair, 1872-73; D. Whipple, 1874; R. F. Whipple, 1875; W. F. 
Dillenbeck, 1876-78; R. Sherman, 1879-80; A. F. Bigelow, 1881-82; W. A. 
Wood, 1883-84; J. R. Kay, 1885-86; F. L. Knapp, 1888-90; A. L. Smith, 1891- 
95; W. T. Best, 1896-98; W. E. Greene, 1899-1900; R. F. Whipple, 1901-02; 
E. E. Day, 1903-06; W. E. Cramer, 1907-09; R. P. Green, 1910-13; S. W. 
Fessenden, 1914-17; L. E. Rose, 1917-18. 



Appendix 815 

The French Roman Catholic Church of Malone was founded November 29, 
186S, with legal incorporation May 21, 1869, as St. Mary's Church of Malone, 
New York (usually called Notre Dame Church), with Edward Cherrier and 
Joseph Menard as lay trustees. A church edifice was erected during the summer 
of 1869. Its rectors have been John B. LeGrand, 186S-83; Edward Blanchard, 
1884-1917; T. Campau, 1918. The present lay trustees are Moses Bessette and 
David Dubois. At the beginning of 1918 the parish contained 1,000 families, 
or 4,428 persons. 

St. Helen's Roman Catholic Church of Chasm Falls was founded from 
St. Mary's of Malone by Rev. John B. LeGrand in 1S77, with Joseph Boyea and 
David Boivin as lay trustees, and its house of worship was built soon afterward 
with funds donated by friends of Father LeGrand in France. The rectors have 
been J. B. LeGrand, 1877-81; E. Peuffier, 1881-S2; C. E. Perrin, 1883; D. J. 
Halde, 1885-91; E. Blanchard, 1891; McDermott, 1891-94; Z. A. Per- 
ron, 1S94-97; Z. B. Decay, 1S97-98; L. F. Lussier, 189S-1902; A. J. Boulerice, 
1902-03; J. L. St. Jacques, 1903-07; 0. Levesque, 1910-14; L. Phaneuf, 1914-15; 
Z. A. Jutras, 1915-18. There are 103 families in the parish. The present 
trustees are Antoine Laroche and B. Wood. 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was incorporated in June, 1913, with 
Caroline J. Phillips, Sadie W. Lawrence, Williamine S. Child, Helen M. Gurley 
and Fred F. Fisk as trustees. The membership numbers fifteen or twenty, 
and the society occupies the old Arsenal Green school house for its meetings. 

Data covering civic, fraternal and beneficial orders are given in the chapter 
on Malone. 

MOIRA. 

Supervisors. — Jason Pierce, 182S-30; Sidney Lawrence, 1831-33; Jason Pierce, 
1834-36; Orrin Lawrence, 1837; Jason Pierce, 1838; 'Sidney Lawrence, 1839-49; 
Orrin Lawrence, 1841-43; Samuel Manning, 1844-4S; Horace Dickinson, 1849; 
Darius W. Lawrence, 1850-51; Simon D. Stevens, 1852-53; William Austin, 
1854; Aaron G. Perry, 1855; Simon D. Stevens, 1856; Darius W. Lawrence, 
1857-62; Luther A. Burnham, 1863; Darius W. Lawrence, 1864-66; Luther A. 
Burnham, 1867-75; Joseph W. Brown, 1876; Horace M. Stevens, 1877; Benja- 
min F. Harris, 1878-85; Fred F. Hutchins, 1886; Benjamin F. Harris, 18S7-88; 
John O. Slater, 1889; Benjamin F. Harris, 1890; John O. Slater, 1891-98; 
Elisha A. Rust, 1899-1910; Irving Peck, 1911-12; William H. Montross, 1913- 
14; Irving Peck, 1915-16; George W. Harris, 1917-18. 

Congregational Church and Society of Moira organized March 5, 1823, but 
not incorporated until August 14, 1843. Trustees at incorporation: Moses A. 
Symonds, Thomas Oakes and Enos Day. Pastors from 1823 to 1843: John 

Kennon, Joseph Butler, Reynolds, Charles Bolls, Howard. 

Church edifice erected in 1844 and dedicated in 1845. Pastors since incorpora- 
tion: F. B. Reed, 1844-46; R. T. Conant, 1847-51; G. T. Strong and — 
Cutler, 1851-65; H. Lancashire, 1865-67; S. H. Williams, 1868-71; B. Burnap, 
1872-76; T. H. Griffith, 1877-78; J. P. Richardson, 1879-81; W. H. Conroy, 
1882-83; O. Jenkins, 1884-85; T. Watson, 1886-97; R. E. Andrew, 1898-1 90.-) • 
A. G. Lewis, 1906-10; E. E. Barrett, 1910-13; C. Shaw, 1914-16. Present 



816 History of Franklin County 

trustees: C. A. Burdick, T. R. Eddy and George N. Ellwood. The church has 
no pastor. 

The Christian Church of the Town of Moira organized at a very early but 
not definitely known date at Moira, and reorganized January 26, 1846, at 
Brushton, with Olney Peck, A. G. Perry and William Bowen trustees. Church 
edifice erected in 1867. The church records are very incomplete, but as far as 
I can gather the following have been pastors: Ezekiel Hildreth, Solomon 
Sayles, Harrison Pierce, H. Reynolds, George Shear, Walter Mill, L. A. Brand, 

Soreby, T. A. Quail, B. S. Crosby, Elder Cutler, G. D. Stearns, Percy B. 

Robinson, E. E. Barrett, demons Shaw, Philip Ge:ter, C. 0. Brown. Present 
trustees: Wallace Tryon, M. W. Wright and Ernest Haskell. 

First Methodist Episcopal Church and iSociety of Moira incorporated July 26, 
1S52, but was first recognized by conference as a parish in 1850, and had had 
preaching since 1827 by circuit riders. First trustees: Sidney Lawrence, Ira 
Russell, Hiram Pierce, Wm. A. Whitney and Varnum P. Hill. Church edifice 
erected in 1869, the union church having been occupied previously. List of 
pastors: Rufus E. King, 1850; Thomas Ritchey, 1851-52; F. A. O'Farrell, 1853; 
C. Sink, 1854; Ralph Pierce, 1855; Chas. Baldwin, 1856; G. D. Greenleaf, 1857; 
A. F. Bigelow, 1858-60; S. Griffin, 1860; Chamberlain Phelps, 1S61-62; S. O. 
Corbin, 1863-65; Otis Gibson, 1866-68; A. F. Bigelow, 1869; W. W. Hunt, 
1870-72; H. W. P. Allen, 1873; Rufus E. King, 1874-75; T. W. Gregory, 1876- 
77; S. E. Brown, 1878-79; W. R. Helms, 1880-82; W. H. KanorF, 1883-85; 
W. A. Nichols, 18S6; M. D. Sill, 1887-91; C. H. Walton, 1S92-96, with S. S. 
Kline, W. T. Cross and A. J. Funnell as assistants at different times; F. B. 
Stanford, 1897-98; W. F. Purrington, 1899-1903; W. H. Summers, 1904; 
Wm. Thomas, 1905-08; M. H. Dowd, 1909-14; W. H. Pullen, 1915-18. Present 
trustees: George S. Page, C. E. Brush, W. H. Montross, Frank L. Joy; Homer 
0. Stiles, Herbert A. Stiles. The church has 199 members. 

First M. E. Church, Brush's Mills, incorporated March 10, 1874, and church 
edifice erected same year. First trustees: Nelson J. Lyon, Joel Orton, James 
Eddy, Samuel A. Gillett and Eleazer Austin. Present trustees: E. E. Harris, 
G. E. Monteith, Edson Turner. Pastors the same as at Moira. The church has 
101 members. 

Saint Mary's Church of Brush's Mills incorporated October 15, 1875, but a 
mission from 1S50. Church edifice erected in 1S55, which was greatly enlarged 
and improved, at a cost of about $5,000, in 1874. List of rectors: Father 
McCabe, Father A. Thaves and Father J. J. Sherry of Malone while it was a 
mission. Father Archambeault was the first resident rector in 1S70-73; G. J. 
Normandeau, 1873-S2; M. R. Burns, 1883-S6; E. <G. Brice, 18S6-9S; F. X, 
Charbonneau, 1898-1900; T. J. Mahoney, 1900-18. Timothy O'Connell and John 
A. Sullivan are the lay trustees for 1918. 

St. Peter's Church in the Village of Brush's Mills incorporated June 30, 
1367, with Henry N. Brush and Christopher Jameson wardens, and H. Corbin 
Brush, Benj. F. Whipple, Geo. Farrington, George P. Baker, Francis T. Heath, 
Wm. J. Hall, John J. Hall and Milton Heath vestrymen. The rectors have been 
C. F. Robertson, 1868;- John Randall, 186S-75; Alfred L. Royce, 1875-77; W. M. 
Cook. 1877-79; Daniel Flack. 1881-83; M. P. Pearse, 1884-S5; Chas. Temple, 



Appendix 817 

1885-86; G. E. Edgar, 1886; George Soinerville, 1887-88; N. W. Stephens, 1889- 
90; R. W. Brown, 1890-91; Alfred L. Fortin, 189-2-1911; H. A. Barrett, 1911- 
14; E. E. Hutchinson, 1914-18. 

North Star Lodge No. 107, F. and A. M., organized at Lawrenceville, Septem- 
ber 3, 1844, removed to Moira January 31, 1S55, and to Brushton February 9, 
1887. Had eighty-seven members in 1918, with these officers: A. L. Donaldson, 
W. M.; Horace Orton, S. W.; Hoy Smith, J. W.; George DeLong, S. D. ; George 
Ellvvood, J. D. ; Edson Turner, secretary ; George DeLong, treasurer ; Luther 
Whitney, S. M. C; John Wemette, J. M. C.; Horace Jenkins, tyler. 

H. L. Aldrich Post No. 363, G. A. R., organized in April, 1S83, and had 
twenty-three members in 1918. The largest membership had been over 100. 
Officers for 1918: H. P. Steenberge, commander; Standish Steenberge, senior 
vice-commander; John Greenow, junior vice-commander; A. B. Allen, adjutant; 
J. S. Miller, quartermaster; Ezra LaBell, surgeon; J. 0. Allen, chaplain; John 
Williams, officer of the day. 

Sidney Lawrence Lodge No. 660, I. O. O. F., organized February 24, 1893, 
and now has forty-six members, with officers as follows for 1918: Joseph Albert 
White, noble grand; George N. Ellwood, vice-grand; Wm. Jonathan Drake, 
secretary; W 7 m. Sidney Lawrence, treasurer and chaplain. 

Brushton Grange No. 901, Patrons of Husbandry, organized January 28, 
1901, and has 385 members. Officers for 1918: John Mahar, master; E. C. 
Crowley, overseer; Mrs. George Ellwood, lecturer; H. S. Orton, steward; 
T. O'Connell, assistant steward; Mrs. T. O'Connell, lady assistant steward; 
Wallace Tryon, chaplain; Warren H. Smith, treasurer; Mrs. John Mahar, secre- 
tary; Mrs. C. Hastings, Ceres; Mrs. Fred Orton, Pomona; Mrs. H. M. Aldrich, 
Flora. 

SANTA CLARA.. 

Supervisors. — John A. Eraser, 1S89; Wm. A. Fullerton, 1890; Newell W. Lee, 
1891-1900; Wm. A. Fullerton, 1901-04; Emerick T>. Bruce, 1905-06; D. W. 
Riddle, 1907-08; John Redwood, 1909-18. 

WAVERLY. 

Supervisors.— William T. O'Neil, 1881; Charles H. Young, 1882-84; Leroy 
M. Wardner, 1885-88; William H. Flack, 1889-95; William T. O'Neil, 1896- 
1902; Orin L. Wilson, 1903-12; Alexander Macdonald, 1913-15; M. B. Ramsdell, 
1915-16; Orin L. Wilson, 1917-18. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Regis Falls joined in 1882 with 
Dickinson Center as one parish. Church edifice erected in 1S87-88. First 
trustees: William E. King, Mrs. Esther Macfarlane and Daniel W. Flack. 
Present trustees: M. A. Rowell, C. C. Southworth, B. E. Ames, E. E. Bondy, 
J. A. Ketcham, Leslie M. Saunders. Pastors have been same as at Dickinson 
Center, which see. 

Saint Ann's Church, St. Regis Falls, incorporated August 22, 1883, with 
Joseph Bushey and E. St. Hilaire as lay trustees. Church edifice erected in 
1884. F. J. Ouellet rector continuously to 1918. Present lay trustees: John 
Center and Frank Henry. 



818 | History of Franklin County 

The First Free Will Baptist Church of St. Regis Falls organized March 23, 
1893. Church edifice erected 1894-95. List of pastors: James A. Heath, 1893- 
96; Nelson Ramsdell, 1896-98; M. M. Shoemaker, 1898-1900; Nelson Ramsdell, 
1901-02; A. D. Walker, 1902-04; F. E. Miller, 1904-05; Myra C. Hoit, 1905; 
H. H. Stocum, 1909; S. D. Knapp, 1913; John Walker, 1914-16; Peter S. 
Vining, 1917-18. Trustees for 1918: Sylvester Meacham, Fred S. Ramsdell, 
Fred Lang, Le Roy Phillips, George Smith, Oliver Brabon. 

The St. Regis Falls Universalist Church organized as a parish church in 
June, 1916, but not incorporated; has had no installed pastor, but has preaching 
on alternate Sundays by clergymen from Canton. 

Durkee Post No. 504, G. A. R. Officers in 1918: Adnor Johnson, commander; 
Charles Jennette, senior vice-commander; O. Brabon, junior vice-commander; 
B. C. Somers, quartermaster; Harvey G. Waste, chaplain; J. Perkins Smith, 
adjutant; Tom Dubuke, officer of the day. 

St. Regis Falls Lodge No. 100, I. O. O. F., organized in December, 1886, and 
has 145 members. Officers in 1918: Henry Gibbs, noble grand; William Kid- 
ney, vice-grand; Joseph Dunn, secretary; Frank Bedor, financial secretary; 
W. A. Conley, treasurer. 

Blue Mountain Lodge No. 874, F. and A. M., organized June 29, 1909, and 
has sixty members. Officers in 1918: Wm. A. Wardner, worshipful master; 
John Murphy, senior warden; John A. Ketcham, junior warden; J. L. Blood, 
secretary. 

WESTVILLE. 

Supervisors. — Guy Meigs, 1829; Philemon Berry, 1830; Goodrich Hazen, 
1831-32; Alric Man, 1833-35; Henry G. Button, 1836-37; Philemon Berry, 
1838-39; Buel H. Man, 1840-41; Alric Man, 1842-43; Samuel Coggin, 1844-45; 
James Walker, 1846-47; Samuel Man, 1848-49; Richard E. Morey, 1850-51; 
Ebenezer Man, 1851; Philemon Berry, 1852-53; Samuel Coggin, 1854-55; Wil- 
liam C. Boyd, 1856; Darius Hardy, 1857; Samuel Man, 1858; Charles N. John- 
son, 1859-63; Joseph P. Hadley, 1864-65; Gilbert T. Clark, 1866-68; John L. 
Rowley, 1869; Lauriston M. Berry, 1870-75; Albert C. Hadley, 1876-78; 
Lauriston M. Berry, 1879-80; Floyd J. Hadley, 1881-83; Robert Clark, 1884-87; 
Edward F. Rowley, 1888-92; John W. Rowley, 1893-97; B. S. Chapin, 1898-99; 
John W. Rowley, 1900-06; William H. Adams, 1907-12; John Fallon, 1913-16; 
William H. Adams, 1917-18. 

The Westville Free Church Society was incorporated May 1, 1838, and a 
meeting house was erected at Westville Corners soon afterward. The organiza- 
tion included Presbyterians, Methodists and Universalists, who used the building 
in common. The first trustees were James Walker, Laitham Hyde, Buel H. Man, 
Grafton Downer, David Freeman and Henry G. Button. No list of the clergymen 
who served the respective organizations is obtainable. In 1885 the organization 
was abandoned, and the church building was moved to another location and 
put to another use. 

The Presbyterian Society of the Town of Westville was incorporated December 
5, 1885, and at once erected a house of worship at Westville Corners. The first 
trustees were L. M. Berry, John Wright and Leonard Wilson. The society has no 
settled pastor, but has been served for a long time by Rev. J. H. Gardiner of 



Appendix 819 

Fort Covington. The present trustees are Millard Cushman, Allen Stark and 
John C. Wright, and the society has forty members. 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church of the Bangor and Burke circuit was never 
incorporated as a Westville organization, but held services for a number of years 
prior to 1870 in the Sand street school house. Clergy from Cook's Corners 
usually officiated, though the organization had at one time a parsonage, or at 
least a parsonage lot, in the vicinity. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Westville was not incorporated until 
December 3, 1874. though an organization had been in existence there since 
1831, and with recognition by the conference since 1837. Originally the services 
were held in a private dwelling in the southwestern part of the town, and then 
in school houses or in the Free Church at the Corners. A church edifice was 
erected at the Center in 1869. The trustees at incorporation were Robert Clark, 
W. H. Freeman and A. E. Hyde, and for 1918 are Robert Clark, John W. Rowley 
and C. E. Hoadley. The church membership numbers forty-four. Except for a 
year or two the list of pastors is the same as for Constable, which see. 

Franklin Lodge, F. and A. M., was organized in 1851 with twenty members, 
but after 1870 it began to decline, and in 1S99 the charter was transferred to 
a lodge in Brooklyn. 

Westville Grange was organized in 190(1, bvit has not flourished. It now has 
but seventv-nine members. 



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